


I like you unsweet

by lesbleusthroughandthrough



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bodyguard, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Casual Sex, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Liverpool F.C., M/M, Sheep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2018-10-08 21:22:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 51,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10396458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbleusthroughandthrough/pseuds/lesbleusthroughandthrough
Summary: “Why, with all of the safe houses that are in the name of the royal family, are we staying with yourparents?”-Royalty AU where HRH Prince Adam Lallana must go into hiding, protected only by his least favorite member of his security team: Jordan Henderson.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Booperesque](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Booperesque/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [爱非糖](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14503635) by [Dingydong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dingydong/pseuds/Dingydong), [xav1ax](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xav1ax/pseuds/xav1ax)



> Thank you to @booperesque, who basically co-wrote this and provided the lovely graphic.  
>  Also to @lesquatrechevrons for being my royal advisor!  
>  The title is tentatively taken from the [DNCE song of the same name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD4Cig0JN2s).
> 
>  

 

 

Adam was fed up with looking at himself in the mirror. His eyes rolled back into his head while he was still upright, his eyelids sticky and raw.

“Almost done,” Phil promised, probably feeling Adam’s shoulders slump. Adam could feel the slightest of taps from the lint roller as it skated neatly across his back. Lint rolling was a nice but unnecessary touch, he thought, to the most unfluffed jacket Adam had even worn, with n’er a cat hair sight. But why argue? Phil _was_ the best.

“You said that,” Adam croaked instead, “two years ago.”

Phil appeared around his front, dusting around the edges of Adam’s lapel, his nose pinched in concentration.

“You know there’s more involved with State dinners,” he offered meekly, and Adam would’ve felt bad, if Phil hadn’t been his stylist for the last three years, and they hadn’t played out this routine at _every_ State dinner.

“All these years and I still don’t know _why_ ,” Adam said, to the ceiling, as he felt Phil’s warm hands finger along the edge of his collar, to flatten it for the fourth time in as many circumnavigations of Adam’s outfit tonight. “It’s the same people we have in and out every week, for other meals.”

“Just that they’re all together. And the press. I heard the Prime Minister’s wife is wearing Vivienne Westwood,” Phil sighed, and Adam knew Phil would give anything to trade places and be rearranging the frills on a lavish gown and not, as he was, de-fluffing an Italian suit and plumping up shoulder pads. It required so much less artistic mastery.

“You could be tending to the ladies, you know,” Adam pointed out. Although he wouldn’t have wanted Phil anywhere else: the fancier the night, the more Philippe seemed to be so sane compared to the rest of the whole circus. “Instead of making me look more like a penguin.”

“Because you are the centrepiece,” Philippe tutted. “The next generation! A new hope for the country! And the cameras will be all over you, and I won’t let you embarrass me. So, shut up. Where did I leave the hairspray? And I asked you not to scratch your neck, your moles have come up, _again_.”

Adam winced as the cold concealer was reapplied to his neck, and closed his eyes as a cloud of sticky hairspray fell softly onto his face.

Parting his eyelashes now felt even more gluey than before, and the leftover aerosol spiced the end of his tongue.

“Are you and the Earl… uh.” Phil swallowed thickly. “Do you have plans. For afterwards.”

Adam’s reflection took on a seedy kind of smile.

“Studge and I are going out on the town tonight, yes.” He cleared his throat. “Late.”

Studge, his wingman, his _angel_ , would save him from a dreary evening and catapult him into the nightclub district on a Saturday in search of release. And after tonight, Adam would need a release.

Phil had been silent for a while, tucking down the underside of Adam’s bowtie, Adam guessed, in thought. Adam was sure he was brooding over the role of the Earl Sturridge in how the evening would pan out, and disapproving greatly. He wouldn’t, Adam knew, be the only one. But he surprised him instead, by saying:

“You know. When you become King, couldn’t you just… do away with State dinners?” and Adam was surprised enough to actually laugh.

He could have said several things. He could have said that his role in how the monarchy would play out was so tightly constricted, that changing the palace brand of toilet paper would be a nearly impossible feat, let alone abolishing the top social event of the calendar year. He also could have said that when he would be King, he might actually be more involved in the State’s affairs, and give a shit about holding a dinner on it.

Instead, he shuffled on the spot, stretching his toes out where they were pinched by the sides of his shoes. “My kingdom for… a pair of Uggs and a bottle of Shiraz,” he said his old joke- enough to make Phil break concentration and grin.

“Okay,” Phil nodded, “we’re done.” Adam watched his reflection stride over to the door to rap it, and he took a deep breath, rolling his shoulders the whole way back so they clicked into place, ignoring where the suit itched, and the makeup matting his face for the cameras that hung heavy on his cheeks. This event seemed to have already worn him out more than normal, which was a worrying sign for someone who’s life was about to be one long string of such glamourous social events.

_Tonight_ , he told himself. _Think about_ later _tonight._ And the door opened.

“Ready?” the face that poked its way around the doorframe and into Adam’s room was familiar and kind and understanding, so Adam dearly wished the presence of his private secretary did anything more to reassure him. “Your mother is in the hall. I think tonight she wants you to escort her into the dining room. Best not keep the lady waiting.”

“Sure, Klopp,” Adam said, letting his face melt to neutral- his transformation into Prince Adam now complete. “Lead the way.”

Adam’s mother was forever a picture of elegance, and rose to the occasion to blow everyone else out of the water- wrapped in soft looking red silks, with just enough frill to be fancy but not ostentatious. Undoubtedly, Phil’s handiwork.

“You look nice, Mother,” Adam said, the drawl fixed, and she tutted.

“Be friendly,” she said. A scold. _Here we go_. “There’s people to meet at this reception, you know.”

Adam knew. Adam knew “people” translated to “nice young men” which in turn translated to “you’re a twenty-eight-year-old gay prince who has never remotely looked like settling down, tick-tock”. _The country needs a distraction. That’s your job._

He just wasn’t in the mood. Everyone he was introduced to these days had the Future Partner label hanging over them, and even though the dust from Adam’s sudden closet exit had settled by now, Adam felt the pressure begin to sit on his shoulders: pick a dude, and you had better do it soon.

Sad thing was, he probably would. And the guy would probably be perfect: for the people, but probably not for Adam. That was how royalty had always worked, right?

But he’d humour his mother for now, if he had to.

“Sure,” he said, planting a kiss on her powdery cheek. He nudged his hand under her elbow and guided her into the dining room. “Is the new treasury secretary here yet? He sounds like a laugh. I wouldn’t mind meeting him… Kidding. I was _kidding._ ”

* * *

 

“Well,” Studge said, his tone mocking, drawn out and nasally from somewhere behind Adam- draped, no doubt, over the whole of Adam’s bed, “you survived.”

“Shut up,” Adam snorted. He was less and less focused on his shirt selection process, and was just feeling them now, as though that would bring up the best number.

“You’re _moanier_ about it this year,” Adam could hear the sound of what was, presumably, Studge stuffing a load of crisps in his mouth. “You’re only about a quarter of your way through your life’s worth of duties, bro- _woah_ ,” the crisp packet fell, open, onto Adam’s bed. “What is _that_?”

“Ew,” Adam said, gesturing at Studge’s open mouth. “Close that. I don’t want half-digested crisp on my sheets.” Like he was being heard or anything, as Studge kicked his feet up into the air, howling. A small giggle made its way up Adam’s throat and he didn’t even try and keep it down.

This was the Earl of Sturridge. Recently handed earldom, blossoming into a frightfully good politician, Adam’s best friend and also: a goofball. And Adam was so glad that he had him as a friend, a real friend, back when they were on civic duty together, in the madness.

“What,” he said, as Studge started to wipe his eyes dry. The crisps, however, still lay freely scattered across Adam’s bed. “Is your problem.”

Studge made a clucking noise. It might have been “zebras”.

Adam looked down at his shirt and it’s flamboyant, zebra-striped glory. He’d asked Philippe for the campest selection of t-shirts he could find and, judging by the reaction, they had a winner.

“Alright,” he said, scooping his jacket from the chair and kicking at the edge of the bed to bring Studge back to reality. “Let’s get me laid.”

* * *

 

They hadn’t been to this club before, having thoroughly overfished their other waters. It didn’t matter so much for Studge, but strategically bad fashion sense only bought Adam so much anonymity, as in:

_D’ya think that’s the crown prince?_

_Nah, no way would he dress that badly._

As usual, they’d taken a taxi from a side-road out the back of the palace, skulling vodka as they went to make sure by the time Adam reached the crowd his body was sufficiently numb. The back door was a press thing, not a security thing. Adam was always aware of the presence of his security detail- he knew how they worked, he knew where they were likely to orbit - exactly like satellites, he knew they were out there somewhere, watching everything, but he could never be sure _where._

The dancefloor was alive like its own living, breathing being: bathed in shades of purple that flickered and changed as it swayed like an ocean. Adam’s eyes blurred for a second, and he tightened his grip on Studge’s arm, the odd flailing elbow hitting him in the ribs a pleasant reminder that he was, actually, still alive.

Studge dragged him over to the bar, just about upright as they tripped up the steps – inebriated by both laughter and giggles, balance not helped with the various slaps on the back and declarations of “you are _smashed_ , mate”. It was elevated above the dancefloor, like a perch, and Adam leaned the whole way over it, waving plastic in the direction of the bar staff.

“What do you want?” he asked, cupping his hand around Studge’s cheek to get his attention, and then not hearing the answer. Instead, he chose the most decoratively named cocktail he could see listed above their heads.

“I’ve got one,” Studge said, turning him by his shoulders, wheezing the words out through giggles. “Him,” his finger extending lazily over the crowd, “he’s been watching you.”

“Since when,” Adam asked, turning to look.

“Since I started looking.”

Adam tucked his credit card safely back into his jacket. “Maybe it’s _you_ he’s looking at.”

Studge gave him his stickiest, sleaziest smile. “Nah,” he said, taking the drink. “It’s _always_ you.”

“Modest,” Adam tutted, as their glasses clinked. “Maybe he recognises me.” He contemplated his drink, the same psychedelic purple that the lights had turned the dance floor.

“Or maybe it’s that time of the night in a bar. _Dude._ ” Studge made an attempt to turn Adam the whole way around again, and Adam saw him – at the bottom of the steps, too casually leaned against the railings. Dark, furrowed eyebrows, wide shoulders, shirt sleeves pushed up enough for Adam to see the promises of intricate trails of ink running up and down his arms.

_Yes._

“Your type, right?” Studge asked, but he never got an answer. Adam threw back his drink – predominately gin, he decided, as it rocked his insides – and started down the stairs.

Eye contact first, body contact next. Hands, then hips as he slid closer. He was a bit short on time tonight and cutting corners was necessary.

Besides, this guy looked like he was up for it, matching Adam’s height, and then his touch when Adam moved to press his lips to his ear.

“Hi,” he said, over the din, his mouth pressed hard to the guy’s skin- a cloud of familiar, beery incense filling the whole way up his nose, down to his lungs. He palmed slowly into his waist, skin warm against his hands. Their hips shifted in time to the music, together. Adam was reminded, as his blood rushed south, just how long it had been since he’d had someone. It made the State dinner he’d just lived feel like years ago. Anonymous, no longer the step below his father. When he was on duty he was just the next in line – someone who might have something to say one day, but not right now, thank you very much. Now he was _whoever_ he wanted to be.

“Hi.” His drawl was distinctly southern, not that it mattered, with his hands gripping Adam’s hips like that, grinding closer. This had to be a new record.

_Cheers, Studge._

“Hey,” the guy said suddenly, back into Adam’s ear, loud enough to make him shudder. “Hate to say this, but do you come here often? You look familiar.”

“Nope,” Adam said. Then he ended all further discussion on the matter when he stuck his tongue deep into the guy’s mouth.

* * *

 

Adam shouldn’t have napped and regretted it when he did eventually wake up. He could have only been asleep mere minutes, and already his hangover was making itself at home.

The first thing that alerted him to the fact that this was not his own room in the palace was the smell: old socks and Chinese takeaway. The bed felt harder, the duvet felt lighter, and there was the now-unwelcome weight of an arm across his back. His skin itched, feeling distinctly unclean. It always did, once the orgasm wore off.

_Nugh_. He thought, as he moved his head, and it pounded in protest. _It wasn’t even a particularly good one._ He couldn’t help feeling that maybe he’d forced it a bit.

His eyes rolled open- dim, distorted shapes took a while to come into focus: clothes draped back over an armchair like a multi-coloured land slide. A quick shift of his eyebrows showed the open cupboard equally in distress.

He pushed himself onto his elbows, slowly letting the arm on him slide onto the bed. Softly, and in a way he might even have enjoyed an hour ago. Adam swallowed, and his throat thickened: it was bad if _you_ could even tell that your breath reeked.

He was wondering about Studge’s whereabouts as he pulled himself up- the timeline of the night so far sliding into place like a jigsaw puzzle: starting at the edges, and working its way in. He remembered the club, the taxi, his clothes…

_Hmmm, clothes._

He made his way across the room- stiff, and rubbing his palm into the base of his spine to quell the ache deep in the muscle. Like it actually would, or something. When he heard a voice, he flinched.

“Babe,” the pile of sheets, and the owner of the arm that he’d just left, moved. “Where you going?”

_Babe._ It was enough to make Adam squirm, itch like he was dirty again. Bestowing a pet name like Adam actually belonged to someone.

“Bathroom,” he said hoarsely. He remembered a name when he closed the bedroom door behind him: _Danny._ Did it belong to the bedsheet collection? Or was it a name that Adam had given in a panic? Not that it mattered. He’d have figured out by now if his real identity had been uncovered. People didn’t generally just let Prince Adam go to the bathroom unescorted. When Prince Adam was around, people didn’t sleep, and Adam nearly always got breakfast.

Breakfast that was usually more trouble than it was worth.

The house was a comfortable size for a bachelor pad. Adam’s pants were across the couch in the living room, his t-shirt on the stairs.

_God,_ he thought. _What a mess._

A fully stocked fridge was good, though. A fully stocked fridge was _unusual_ and Adam had barely dared to dream given the state of the bedroom. His hands closed around the orange juice cartoon like it was the only viable beacon of hope in the stupid place, extra aware of how cold it was, equally aware of how his head still throbbed like someone was banging pots and pans around the inside of it.

He demolished the entire carton and ended with a satisfied burp, that didn’t even veer anywhere near a chunder. Satisfied – or as close to satisfied as anyone could be with a raging hangover, in other words, it was fleeting - Adam checked his pockets, his wallet, his phone, sat on the stairs as he quickly toed on his shoes, and stepped out into the morning.

As he walked up to the far-too-recognisable black jeep parked up the road, he began thinking of ways to talk himself out of trouble for napping.

_Sorry, got carried away._

_We had a drink first._

_Why would you drive this_ monster _to a covert mission?_

_That last one’s good. Deflect_ , he decided. But then again, it also depended on who had been sent on the babysitting mission. As he thought this, the window of the jeep slowly rolled down, at the same rate which Adam’s heart sank. The crispy blonde quiff was unmistakeable: Adam’s least favourite minder after a hook up.

“What are _you_ doing here? _Again?_ ” he snarled.

He wished for anyone else: for Emre, who would have brought a restorative pizza and a large bottle of water, or for Lo, who had let him bestow a nickname, or even for Klopp- because even though he was the boss, he might have responded with something as fun as “rescuing you”.

Instead, wearing a suit with right angles like it had been cut from metal, Adam was suddenly contending with the one member of his security detail who he came close to actually despising.

“Do _they_ know?” Hendo asked, nodding at the front door. Adam had known the guy nearly two years now and he could safely conclude that he had never smiled, at anything, in his life.

“They.” Adam snapped. “ _He._ And no, no need,” he added the last hastily, as he could tell Henderson was already reaching for the confidentiality agreement in the front of the car beside him. “No need,” he said again, opening the car and climbing into the back seat. He could still hear the yelp from the last guy to guess his identity after they’d fucked. Must be terrifying waking up to a crowd of suits around your bed holding out a large collection of paper for you to sign.

There was a lot to be said for hiding in plain sight. Most people didn’t recognise a Famous when they were thrust under their eyes. (Or were thrusting them under their eyes.) If they did, a nice ambush and a polite conversation with Adam’s security detail reminding him of who they were and who they knew, and mostly importantly that no one would buy their story, tended to be swift remedy.

Adam closed the car door behind him as quietly as he could. The street was deserted, not even a cat or a twitchy curtain. He sighed and reclined the whole way flat across the back seat, worried that the orange juice might suddenly start repeating on him.

“Are you sure they don’t?” the voice came from the front seat, quiet. Adam was assured of never getting more than a sentence in a row from Henderson, which was probably the only thing he had going for him.

“ _He,”_ Adam hissed. “I fuck dudes. I rode _him_ into the sunset. Get it right.” The venom was probably undeserved, and it only made his head ache more. But Adam hadn’t found the time to get annoyed with Klopp instead: that he seemed to repeatedly send the one member of the team who was the most uncomfortable with Adam’s sexuality.

However, Henderson’s nervous gulp was quite loud and quite satisfying.

“Take me home,” Adam muttered, cloaking his face with his arms.

“Seatbelt.”

“No,” Adam snarled back. When he stopped feeling petty, maybe. His liver was making him feel stupid and used and gross, and being petty made him feel better. Under him, the car seat rattled as the engine growled to life, and Hendo guided it into the morning.

Adam tilted his head back to count the street lamps as the flashed past, their light just about penetrating the tinted windows.

He heard Hendo mutter something that might have been “checking in” from the front seat, but it wasn’t to Adam- rather to his Bluetooth earpiece.

Adam’s eyes – quite beyond his orders – flickered down to Hendo’s hands on the steering wheel between the gaps in the seats and the long, intricate veins of raised blue twisting and disappearing like vines down the cuffs at his wrist. As Adam watched, Hendo’s fingers curled further around the curves of the wheel, his knuckles raising through his skin like white shackles.

“ _What_.” The word sounded like a cold whip through the car.

Again, it wasn’t to Adam.

But that really should have been his first warning.

The steering wheel spun suddenly, sending Adam skidding back across the seat, and his head collided with the car door with a hollow _thud_.

“He’s fine,” he heard Hendo say, vaguely, far away. The car lurched in the other direction, and Adam used the motion to help himself throw his body upright.

_Fine_ , Adam thought. _Me?_ His head throbbed. _That’s rather relative._

The car straightened up, and even though Adam felt himself pressed back against the seat by pure velocity, it was with a force that _hurt_. He’d just figured out whether or not his head was the right way up when Jordan swerved again – Adam lunged for the seatbelt beside him – roaring down through the suburbs.

Adam knew the signs of his security team’s defensive manoeuvres – _usually_ , he was the last to know about them, so he’d learned to pick up the signs. _Usually_ , the most apt course of action involved grabbing onto something solid and holding on for dear life, like now.

However, by the time Hendo had rolled the car to a stop, Adam’s hangover and copious amounts of orange juice had caught up with him, and when Hendo opened the door for him to climb out of Adam could only loll forward and vomit out onto the tarmac.

He was sure Hendo leapt back in horror, but couldn’t even funnel his most hateful glare in his direction, as he threw up again.

“Sorry,” he might have heard Hendo mumble. He was too distracted by the taste of the inside of his mouth, rather like he’d been chewing on a bar of soap. Anyway, it wasn’t like Hendo to _feel_ , so he might not have even said it at all. However, he definitely did interrupt Adam’s short, peaceful solace with his head buried into the cool leather seat with: “Er, you need to come with me. Now.”

Adam knew better than contemplating another option. He was lifted up by the elbow as he was pulled out of the car. Bile smell was all up his nose and he noticed, and was momentarily pleased about the fact that, it was all over Hendo’s shoes, too.

Hendo must also have realised this, because he followed Adam’s eyes to the ground, and quickly let go of his arm – like on a reflex – and took a step back.

With his arms free Adam wrapped them around and around himself, morning wind rushed into his chest. He mourned his jacket, which he had left forgotten across the backseat, containing all of his worldly possessions. His eyes darted – to the service station behind them, to the motorway the other side. His chest dropped suddenly as a weird fear flooded it.

Hendo huffed, bringing him back to earth. He had started to unzip his jacket; the heavy, black, regulation one that all of his bodyguards wore. Adam could now feel the extra rattle of his knees as they knocked in the cold, and his breath clouded in front of his eyes.

Hendo dropped the coat around Adam’s shoulders, the weight jolting him into something like consciousness. He then gave Adam a hesitant sort of pat, on his shoulder, as though to confirm that he looked as bad as he felt. And it must have been really bleak, because he started to steer Adam in the direction of the service station – one hand a sharp claw on Adam’s elbow, even through the coat – without the usual song and dance about a Clark Kent-ish style cover; usually a woolly beanie or sunglasses. Adam looked _unrecognisably bad._

It wasn’t that it was worth it, or anything.

The petrol station itself was small, with only a handful of pumps outside, a shop that may have had no food naturally occurring in nature available for purchase, and a barely-alive Burger King in one corner. Klopp’s presence, frowning over a Styrofoam coffee cup in a booth, made Adam suddenly feel equally relieved and fearful.

“Hendo,” Klopp began, sounding exhausted, “please.” Hendo had manoeuvred Adam into the seat opposite, in against the window; and had made to cross the café again. “We’re all friends here.”

Hendo looked confused for a second – staring at Klopp and looking decidedly pinched around the nose – before he slid into the booth too. Adam knew that usual protocol never involved his security personnel in his immediate vicinity in cafés – because that would be too obvious, apparently – so he took Hendo’s hesitation as confusion about the order, and not his own paranoia that Hendo’s distain for him really was that obvious.

Hendo, he thought, was still radiating quite a lot of heat despite the coat, and his twitching knee was sending tangible ripples through the air circulating under the table.

“Don’t try the coffee,” Klopp continued, clearly trying to offer up a smile, but grimacing instead. “Tastes like filtered earth.”

Adam wasn’t sure what kind of response to muster up to that statement. Something was immediately, obviously, very wrong and it wasn’t like Klopp to dance around the edges of those kind of things.

Klopp cleared his throat, and leaned forward some more over his crossed arms. His eyes, Adam realised, really were _very_ blue.

“There’s been an incident.” Klopp began slowly, waiting for it to obviously register with Adam before moving on. “At the palace. In the last few hours.”

“Oh,” Adam had to say, before Klopp would continue. He willed his heart to speed up, for his brain to tick a bit faster, but it just wasn’t happening.

Klopp cleared his throat, and leaned a little further across the table. “At around three o’clock this morning,” he said, unblinking, “surveillance captured a hooded figure lingering in the corridors of the palace. Then entering your room.”

The coffee machine behind the Burger King counter spluttered to life. Adam jumped to look at it, instead catching sight of the tendons stretched to breaking point in Hendo’s neck as he started decidedly at the table top. This was the most alarming thing so far.

“Adam,” Klopp urged his attention slowly back to his very slow speech, “they were armed.”

Now, Adam’s heart started to register the urgency of the situation. In that it suddenly cut out.

“You can imagine,” Klopp continued, with clear care, “that they weren’t pleased to find you weren’t there. And so, instead they went looking for the King.”

“Oh,” Adam croaked. If he was still breathing, he wasn’t aware of it. His eyes closed and he saw his mum, dusting down his lapels in her ball gown; and his dad, giving him a devilish wink down the long dinner table. Hours ago. A hand fastened on his shoulder to steady him, even though he hadn’t realised he’d been swaying.

“The Queen is a little shocked, but unhurt. The King – with what was undoubted bravery from his years in service – only suffered one shot wound.” Klopp swallowed. Adam had never, ever seen him stumble over a single word. “He’s in hospital, and there will be some minor surgery. He’s expected to be absolutely fine.”

That statement should have left silence, but instead the coffee machine spluttered again, definitely louder, and Adam wished he could fling it against a wall.

“I want to see him,” he said. “I want to see my Dad.” He would never regret the petulance of it, but felt rather ashamed of the way his throat stuck at the end of his declaration.

“Ah,” Klopp said. He picked up his cup and started to swirl his coffee until it came dangerously close to spilling over the edge. “I’m afraid, Adam, that decision has been made. Since we were – uh – unable to apprehend the intruder, your safety is our priority.”

Adam couldn’t breathe.

“I have to see them,” he croaked, “ _please_.”

Klopp continued, “no, no. Anyone looking for you would then know exactly where you are, and our best advantage is that we can safely assume that right now they don’t. Bringing you back would only alert them. We will catch them, but not like this. When I get back to the palace there will be a briefing on whether or not, or what, to tell the press. But until then, I can give you something that I thought, gravely, that I had not given you this morning.” His eyes flickered to Hendo, and back to Adam. “ _Time_.”

Adam closed his eyes as his lungs sunk back into his chest.

_Dad_ , he thought, trying to reconcile his father – roly-poly, good humoured and wise – and the word _shot_. Mangled, distorted images filled his head and he desperately wished they would leave, just so he could _think_.

“There’s a new car out the back,” Klopp’s voice said. “Hendo, I’m activating emergency protocol. Protocol Yellow. You know what to do.” He pushed something across the table under his hand.

Hendo snatched at what rattled distinctly like car keys and leapt like he’d been a coiled spring, ready to go since he’d sat down. He was making towards the door before he seemed to realise that Adam wasn’t following him. He wondered if Hendo really looked impatient enough to stomp the floor.

“Adam,” Klopp said evenly, reaching a gargantuan arm the whole way across the table to press down on his shoulder. “You can trust him.”

That hadn’t been Adam’s biggest concern, but then again, maybe it should have been. Hendo had never been one to give the impression that he enjoyed his job: glorified babysitting. He was pricklier about it than most but Adam didn’t doubt that he had that whole jumping-in-front-of-a-bullet thing under contract anyway.

But Adam trusted Klopp, so he’d take the delegation.

No, his thoughts hadn’t been anywhere near himself. Pressing desperately on his temples was this irrepressible fear for his parents, so much that he could not connect to his feet to get them to move.

Klopp got up, giving Adam a little bit more of a forceful shove when he patted him now.

“We’ll be in touch,” he promised. “Don’t worry – we can let you know if there are any changes. But we will need to get moving. Hendo has a long way to go.”

Hendo fidgeted, clearly also very aware of this fact.

Adam – mostly aware that he knew no facts whatsoever – followed him blindly out the back of the service station. The car Hendo stopped at was distinctly smaller and redder than previously. That was really all Adam cared to take in about it, because outside the air was sharper and gave what had just happened inside a very surreal edge.

“Where are we going?” he asked, climbing inside. The zebra stripes on his t-shirt told him more about the reality of the situation than he needed to know.

“The less you know,” Hendo said, “the better. But Klopp’s right: it’s far.” There were several seconds of heavy silence. “How are you?”

Adam was aware enough to know that Hendo was hoping to avoid vomit on his floor and that it was not a genuine question after his wellbeing.

“Fine,” he said, politely. “I think I got it all up the first time.” Not to mention that Klopp’s news had been the equivalent of about three cold showers.

Hendo made no motion of acknowledgement, apart from turning the car on and sliding its gearstick into reverse. Adam wasn’t sure what compelled him to do it, but he was very aware of the weight of Hendo’s coat, and slowly sank back into it and pulled it further around himself.

He breathed deep, realising a second later that he was looking for a smell, something musky to give him some comfort. He shouldn’t have been surprised that there wasn’t one. It was an army thing, being able to keep your clothes clean for weeks, and not that Hendo was as icy physically as he was temperamentally. Although Adam had his suspicions.

He pressed back into the seat, drawing his knees up to press them to the side of the door, curling into the smallest ball he could manage. Road signs flicked by as the car eased onto the motorway, and soon the trees flanking the side of the road blurred together against the grey backdrop. Adam had forgotten how early in the morning it was.

He jolted, unware that he’d slid into sleep, and it took him several seconds to get past the horrible taste in this throat and the crick in his neck to remember what was going on.

“Where are we?” he croaked, his voice still asleep. As was his knee, squished to the door. He was tangled up in Hendo’s coat, and struggled in momentary panic before he realised what was tying his arms in place. There was, also, an unwelcome press on his bladder. The reminder that he had spent the previous evening consuming vast, _vast_ amounts of liquid. “I need a wee.”

“I can’t tell you where we are,” Hendo said, ignoring the second statement.

“Yeah, alright,” Adam snapped, as pins and needles started to run up his leg. “I _need_ a wee. _Now._ ”

“Sir - “

“It’s _urgent_.”

Hendo shot him a thinly-veiled look of distaste from under his eyelids. Adam glared back.

Slowly, as though to demonstrate just how much of an inconvenience it was for Adam to make him pause his mission, Hendo indicated into one of the motorway exits. Adam fidgeted, aware that something inside was very close to bursting.

After forever, they drew up beside the entrance to a park and Adam fell out onto the pavement, spotting a public toilet at the end of the path, but there was _no time_. His numb knee almost gave way as he stumbled through the nearest flowerbed, undid his zip, and released.

Bitterly, he realised that his bladder had been distracting him from the rest of his problems.

He glanced over his shoulder, back at the car, to catch Hendo suddenly rearranging himself to look the other way. He might almost have looked embarrassed.

Adam had not spent all that time amongst diplomats and politicians to not recognise when someone had been caught completely off guard. He dressed himself and, filled with sudden grim determination, marched back towards the car.

“Tell me,” he said, slamming the door closed behind him and lifting his chin when he spoke, “where we’re going.”

He hadn’t expected Hendo to be able to draw himself up to the same height. Despite the posturing, he nearly did get there.

“I can’t,” he said, his voice measured. “It’s for your own safety. Sir.”

Adam narrowed his eyes at him. “Tell me, then, about Protocol Yellow. Why I, your _employer,_ have never heard of it.”

It was a bold play. Right now, the dynamic was more two blokes on a road trip, or a kidnapping, than a working relationship. And Hendo wasn’t creative enough to come up with kidnapping.

“Sir,” Hendo said. He faltered suddenly, and turned his head in the direction of the windscreen. “We will… be changing the car again in half an hour.” He cleared his throat. “Seatbelt.”

“Tell me,” he demanded, in his best royal commanding voice.

A vein in Hendo’s neck pulsed. Adam was comforted by his unease and glared at him for several more seconds. Slowly, he clicked his seatbelt into place.

The changeover was another service station, another Burger King. Adam had thought had he was feeling more like food, but the minute the burger passed his lips it turned to cement, his stomach flipping too much to receive it.

_But I’m hungry,_ he thought miserably, watching grease run down over his hands, _I am_ so _hungry._ If only he could digest what was happening to him first.

He looked over at Hendo, carefully positioned several feet from Adam’s bench, gulping from his very large coffee cup.

“You can sit, you know,” Adam offered, when Hendo had paused for breath. “I mean, at least have a chip.” He had completely failed at being in charge, right? So he nudged the packet down the bench, deciding the be civil instead.

Not that it mattered. Hendo looked like he would rather die.

They changed cars two more times, reaching the other end of the day before they climbed into the battered Land Rover. Adam was certain that the country wasn’t even this big. Hendo must have doubled back on himself. It did seem extreme, given that his would-be assassin hadn’t even known he was out.

They left the motorway soon after – the roads narrowed to two lanes, and then to one. The towns they passed through grew more and more sparse, until they became single streets. It was so dark, Adam could barely see the countryside around them – but he did recognise that they had been steadily climbing for a while, and suddenly the road steepened. It steepened enough for Hendo to have to lean forward in his seat to stay upright, and a difficult track meant that they bounced around in their seats.

Adam was starting to feel dizzy from the twists in the road, when he saw the two white pillars emerging from the darkness in front of them. Jordan manoeuvred the jeep between them, and Adam noticed the metal gate that must have ordinarily sat between them, propped open.

_Does this mean we’re expected?_

The house seemed to take an age to reach, Hendo following a curving path up to it that Adam couldn’t see. As they grew closer, he could make out the narrow two-storey: lights were on, lovely, warm and yellow.

Hendo pulled up around the back.

“Wait here,” he said. When he opened the door, the car filled with sudden light. It was so bright that Adam had to blink his eyes open.

Hendo paused. “Actually.” He started to climb out of the car. “You’d better come with me.”

“Where are we?” Adam asked, doing his best to follow. Mud squelched under his shoes.

“Protocol Yellow,” Hendo said, with a sigh. He had to lift the back door into its frame as he opened it.

Something about the movement struck Adam, and he was still figuring out what it was when they walked through the door and into the kitchen; full of panelled wood and with a low ceiling. But once he saw the woman waiting for them in the middle of the room, the gig was up: her features were undeniably a softer version of Hendo’s. And at that, Adam almost wouldn’t have believed it, only she tutted, “ _Jordan_ ” and pulled Hendo into a serious squish of a hug.

Doing serious sums in his head, Adam decided that Jordan must have been Hendo’s first name. This was not something he’d previously cared to know.

“ _Mum_ ,” Hendo said, faltering, confirming Adam’s suspicions. Then, gruffly: “why are you still up?”

“Mum?” Adam echoed, weakly.

“To meet our _guest_ ,” the woman said. _Jordan’s mum_ said. She looked over Jordan’s shoulder with something like delight. Adam was used to the expression, even relieved to see it – _finally,_ something he could deal with: an adoring fan of the royal family. He smiled his best photo smile – although probably sub-par, given what he’d had to live through that day - and held out his hand to shake. Jordan’s mum took it in both of hers. He was so glad that he had zipped the jacket up, and that she could not see the zebra stripes.

“Lovely to meet you, ma’am,” he said. “You have a lovely home.” He’d been in one room, but “ _I’ve heard so much about you from your son!_ ” didn’t feel appropriate. Hendo might have also beheaded him.

“Sandwiches!” she exclaimed, still grinning. “I made you both sandwiches. Over here!” Adam liked her immediately, and not just because she was fussing over him, which was always bound to win brownie points.

“ _Mum_ ,” Hendo said, so exasperated that Adam was overcome enough to stuff his fist in his mouth to stop himself giggling. “He’s not our _guest_. He’s _under protection_.”

“-And he could probably do with a sandwich,” his mother finished firmly, drawing their attention to the kitchen table. The tray of neatly cut, white bread triangles of different fillings was probably as long as Adam was high. Meekly, he gathered several up in each hand and waited for his opportunity (preferably when no one was looking) to shove them into his mouth.

“I’ve made the bed upstairs,” she was continuing, leading them on what appeared to be a circumnavigation of the downstairs. Adam couldn’t get over how low the ceiling was, but then again he did spend a lot of time in a palace. The house wasn’t nearly as big as it looked on the outside, with the hearth propping up the roof in the middle of the floor, the kitchen on one side and a living room on the other. “And I cleared the cupboard of stuff.”

Hendo sucked his teeth, muttering: “ _my_ stuff”. He continued to clear his throat, saying: “he’s tired, mum.”

She looked disappointed. Adam glared at Hendo, because he’d being enjoying himself. Anyway, the pause was time to grab more sandwiches.

Hendo insisted in bringing him up the narrow spiral staircase at the edge of the kitchen, up onto a narrow landing. Adam decided he wasn’t overreacting to the low ceiling – it just about scratched the top of Hendo’s head, explaining why he always seemed a little stooped when he walked.

“You’re in here,” he said, at the end of the row. “Bathroom,” he said to the door behind him, “and my parent’s room.”

Adam stopped suddenly. “Where are you sleeping?” he asked, and for a horrible moment, wondered if Hendo was going to bunk with him. _He’s under protection_. Did that mean Hendo had to watch him at every moment, even when he was _asleep_? He had to consciously stop any outward show of revulsion: he couldn’t imagine anything worse that having to sleep with someone else watching him, he hadn’t since his service days and he had no wish to go back to those. He had no wish, either, to going back to that morning, and his accidental nap.

“On the couch,” Hendo replied. He seemed to sense Adam’s fear, and Adam’s biggest consolation was that he looked equally horrified. “ _Definitely_ on the couch.”

“Right,” Adam said, meekly. Hendo’s horror made more sense when the room revealed only one, single bed, with a faded bedspread dotted with what could have been dinosaurs.

“Where’s your dad?” Adam asked, suddenly feeling like he’d accepted his fate too easily.

“It’s lambing season,” Hendo said gruffly. “So probably somewhere on the mountain with the sheep.” He didn’t seem to be in any kind of mood to answer Adam’s questions, having taken on a certain extra rigidity after Adam’s sleeping query. “Goodnight, sir.”

Adam shuffled awkwardly, like it was an answer. Hendo’s back disappeared back downstairs, and Adam heard his mother speaking – her voice hushed and urgent.

He looked back at the dinosaur duvet cover. He remembered the cupboard.

It wasn’t empty he realised, gratefully, as he opened it. Just incredibly neatly stacked. He pulled off the silly zebra striped t-shirt – glad to be rid of the memories that came with it – and chucked it into the furthest corner of the room. It didn’t quite get there, snagging off the edge of the bedframe, but far enough to be satisfied. He pulled off his jeans next, the fabric even felt stale under his hands. He paused in front of the open cupboards in his briefs and socks now. He rather felt like he’d just shed off some old, heavy skin.

From the shelves he took a white t-shirt and some track pants. Hendo wouldn’t mind, right? Adam briefly reflected on his angry mutterings about his things. He put the clothes on anyway, deciding that Hendo was unlikely to take them off by force.

He switched off the light and climbed under the duvet. He expected his brain to whirr all night, but sleep consumed him.


	2. Chapter 2

When Adam stirred, he was stiff. An unusual smell filled his nose, and the duvet around him felt remarkably light compared to what he usually slept in.

He thought about a strange dream he’d had. There’d been an assassin, and he’d been brought into hiding. By _Hendo_ – his least favourite security head. They were hiding out in _Hendo’s_ childhood home. Hendo’s first name was _Jordan_.

He was so glad it was just a dream, and that he’d spent too long sleeping off a large amount of alcohol in the bed of some guy who’d brought him home.

Relief dissipated when he opened his eyes. They were drawn to a shadow at the door, his ears sharpened at a creak on the landing, strained to hear steps down the stairs. He sat up and the duvet was covered with faded cartoon dinosaurs.

He buried his face in his hands and swallowed the urge to scream.

The half-open cupboard, the jeans across the end of the bed… he needed to see something else, suddenly anything else. He pulled his legs out of the tangle of sheets and ripped at the curtains. Then he had to sit down on the edge of the bed, just to take it in.

He could see out the front of the house – he could see the whole way down the mountain, splinters of rock cut into the yellow of the vegetation which sat thick on the ground, and in the sun sent off a velveteen gleam. The bottom of the valley filled with a lake, and in the light, it was silver – a huge mirror that snaked away between the distant peaks. And drawing the line down to the water from the house was a long, thin, snaking road that wound its way back and forth across the sheer slope.

Adam remembered the car climbing last night as it drove. He hadn’t realised it had been for that _long._

It was beautiful, though. The view. There was something calming about the presence of so much air.

Something flickered in the corner of his eye, and he looked down to see the feathery tail of a sheepdog flash into view. He leaned forward, on instinct, and just as the dog continued its dart around the front of the house, Hendo appeared around the corner after it. The reason for the chase became apparent, then, when the dog turned in a crouch, its tail wagging furiously at the game; with a large Wellington boot dangling, awkwardly from its jaw.

Hendo crouched, too, with his arms outstretched as he approached. Adam watched as Hendo made a grab at the boot and the dog danced around him gleefully and back behind the house. Adam waited for Hendo to curse, to shout, but instead he threw his chin up and laughed at the sky.

It was so unexpected that Adam almost took a step back from the window.

The peal of laughter as Hendo let it out reached Adam’s ears even through the glass. Adam watched him double over, his arm tight across his ribs as he suppressed his second laugh into a giggle. Adam didn’t think he’d ever seen his teeth and he’d always thought that Hendo’s eyes only narrowed when he was furious, and not when he was laughing, because Adam had _never_ seen him laugh.

Hendo made to start back after the dog, and looked up at the house. Too late. Adam had been standing in full view at the window, and extra-doubly-too-late, some weird expression had been contorting his face and he was far too sure it had been a grin.

He could only think of one, extra-especially cowardly thing to do. He made a dive for the bed, curling back under the covers, pulling them right up to his neck as he wriggled to face away from the door. He’d just stopped – his heart thudding – when he felt the reverse order of sounds: the creak of the staircase, the groan of the wood outside the door. Why was his heart hammering? Why wouldn’t it stop?

“Sir,” Hendo said, from the door.

Adam had never been more still in his life. He remembered to breathe, though, because that would otherwise definitely raise concerns.

This was probably high on the list of most undignified things he’d ever done, but right now he didn’t feel especially bound by his royal sense of duty. He felt relieved when he heard the tell-tale sounds of Hendo retreating. 

 _God_ , he thought, laughter still ringing in his ears, _he must actually be really…_ young.

Age wasn’t something Adam ever thought about when it came to his security staff. Hendo had been there forever and Adam considered him distinctly mid-thirties, and that he had been in his mid-thirties for probably his entire life. Until, what? Now, some giggling and he was suddenly a _kid_?

It was troubling, but not nearly as troubling as how that bloody laugh still played on a loop in his ears.

* * *

 

Adam woke in the middle of a sharp intake of breath. Light was still streaming in through the open curtains. He blinked, grasping at the strands of lingering noise that had woken him up, frustrated when he had to concede defeat. Loads of _shush-_ ing noises downstairs, though, were enough to make him crawl out from under the covers.

The decibel of conversation dropped.

Adam cursed. This was definitely about him, and there was only one way to stay in the loop with these things. In his socks, he carefully slid along the varnished landing floor until he reached the top of the stairs.

“It’s my _job_ ,” he heard, with more familiar Hendo fury. Adam craned his neck to see between the banisters, but no luck. He slid to the ground, tucking his head into his knees as he strained to listen.

“You can do your job,” another voice said; male and distinctly more accented, “but we _also_ need help. And it looks pretty damn hard, when all you do is sit around all day.”

Adam even heard the hiss. Hendo was _livid_. And it wasn’t even at _Adam_ , who was now really going to enjoy the show. Or at least what he could hear of it.

“He could have _died_ , Dad. He’s under _my charge._ ”

_Oh. Dad._

“If he’s gonna sleep all day,” Hendo’s Dad said, with a distinct effort to sound totally reasonable, “and he’s not going to eat, or even talk - I don’t see why you _can’t_ help us out on the farm. It’s our busiest time and you know perfectly well that there are no extra hands going around town.”

Hendo was silent. Then: “his family were ambushed and _hospitalised_. His majesty knows it was a botched attempt at his own life. Sleeping it off is one of the better ways he could be dealing with it. He is safe, and that is my job.”

 _Oh,_ Adam thought. Hendo was standing up for him. He waited for the follow-up notion to arrive in his head. Truth was, he really didn’t feel like someone worth protecting, at that moment. Something at the back of his mind told him to get a grip.

“Jordan,” his mother’s voice now. Adam knew the tone, his own mother used it when she didn’t expect any back-talk, “we all know the manoeuvres. As long as he’s in the house, he’s safe. But you’ve barely been here a day and you’re already getting cabin fever.” Hendo snorted indignantly, but she continued with an order: “go and help your father with the lambing.”

“ _Mum_.”

“I know he’s a very important man, but you need to take him off this pedestal. I’m sure he’s perfectly capable of minding himself _inside_ the house – “

Adam was straining to catch Hendo’s reply, and leaned slightly too far over the step. The wood whined loudly under his weight, making conversation downstairs come to a sudden halt.

Adam’s stomach dropped. He leapt to his feet and winced at every thud his feet made as he scrambled back towards the door to the bedroom.

_Oops._

Pretending to be asleep was probably defunct as an option at this point. And he reflected with some discomfort: considered pretty pathetic by everyone present. Devoid of ideas he turned and sat on the bed just as Hendo appeared in the threshold.

To Adam’s relief he looked even _more_ awkward than Adam felt.

So Adam seized the moment and spoke first.

“Why are we here,” he said dully. When Hendo moved to reply: “why, of all of the safe houses that are in the name of the royal family, are we staying with your parents?”

Hendo clearly did not expect that to the be question. Adam gave him a moment to collect himself.

“Uh,” he began. _Stuttering_. “The access route, mostly. There’s only one road in, and it takes twenty minutes to drive up. The alternate route is behind us, over a mountain.” He seemed to be able to calm himself by rattling off something that he had clearly learned by heart, and lifted himself up straight; catching his hands behind his back.

So. Laughing Hendo was truly gone.

“That’s not the reason.”

“No,” Hendo pressed. “The nearest town is also quite small and not fond of strangers.” He sounded like a robot.

“And that helps?”

“This place in the last resort,” Hendo said, firmly. “No one but myself and Klopp know of its existence, and this is imperative if there is a possible leak. _Sir_.”

Adam chewed his lip for a second.

“How long with I be here for?” he asked.

“It’s a week-on-week basis. I will speak to Klopp every Thursday from town for updates.”

“Who do I get to contact?”

“ _No one._ ” Hendo looked horrified.

“Fine,” Adam said. It wasn’t like he could have contacted anyone even if he’d wanted to: his phone was still in his jacket, in the back of an ostentatious Range Rover somewhere far away, like in another life at this point. Calm. He was treating Hendo like a spunky diplomat again, it helped him to focus. Prince Adam was much better at telling people off. “If we’re going to be here for _weeks_ , then you have to call me Adam. So do your parents.”

“ _Sir – “_

 _“Adam._ ”

Hendo made a throaty noise. “Okay,” he conceded, looking like he’d been punched and not asked to consider Adam a real person.

Adam paused to let him writhe silently in it.

“Go with your Dad,” he said. “Help him out.”

“Sir – “

“ _Adam!”_ This was going to be an uphill battle.

 _“_ – I am not authorised.”

And _just_ when Adam had started to consider Hendo a human with a personality, and not a robot.

“I _am_ authorising you. Where am I gonna go? Like you said, no one even knows I’m here. If we’re going to be stuck here for a week, I don’t want to fall out with your parents before I’ve even had a conversation with them. Like, before I’ve given them reason to.”

Hendo fought silently with himself for another minute. “Okay,” he said.

“And,” Adam started, “ _thanks_ ,” and when Hendo looked confused, “for standing up for me. Just there.”

Hendo didn’t even twitch.

“Mum keeps making you meals,” he said, unabashedly.

“I really appreciate you,” Adam continued, his facing contorting itself – that damn grin, _again_ , “sticking up for me being a lame guest. I heard every word. It means a lot.”

“There are more sandwiches for the other guys helping out on the farm today – “

“Every. Word.”

Hendo swallowed. Time for Adam to declare victory. “I’ll be down in five minutes.”

The back of Hendo’s neck as he walked away was more red then Adam knew blushing skin was capable of being.

He lied about the five minutes, too. It was more like ten before he heard Hendo’s voice close out the door, but he got in the shower first to prove he’d keep his promise. He knew Hendo would be listening. He did have an annoying habit of doing that.

From Hendo’s wardrobe he stuck with the same cosy track pants and ditched the t-shirt, opting instead for something khaki with considerably longer sleeves. There was even a hoodie to go with it. Adam drowned slightly in all of it.

He scooped the used clothes up in his arms. He avoided breathing too deeply as the zebra t-shirt appeared at the top of the pile.

Contrary to what he’d said to Hendo about falling out with his parents, Adam was immaculately trained at winning people over. It was _literally_ his job.

He padded down the stairs with some force to announce his arrival. Hendo’s mum was still standing, surprised, over by the kitchen sink when he finally arrived down.

“Sorry,” he said, with extra sugar, “if it’s not too much trouble, when you have a minute, could you show me where I could wash these?”

He knew by the immediate change in her expression that he had been absolutely accepted into the fold.

* * *

 

Hendo’s mum – Liz, she had insisted he called her Liz – parked him down on one of the stools at the end of the counter and moved back to continue her work before Adam had interrupted her for a full demo on how to work the family washing machine. He could hear it rumbling out the back and felt very pleased with himself.

“Thank you,” he said again, “for taking me in.”

Hendo’s mum waved off any other sucking up he might have done. “We did what anyone would have. And we want you to make yourself at home.” Adam had offered to make her tea, and she still hadn’t recovered from it. He did wonder though at what point he would start to feel at home, as she wished, and not like a hostage.

“Then may I offer some help?” he asked, as Hendo’s mum starting lifting bags of – flour? Sugar? Assorted baking ingredients? – onto the other end of the counter.

“I’ll never refuse help,” she said. “Do you know how to make a sponge? I have biscuits ready to go out to the boys for tea later but it’s always a good excuse to make a very easy cake.” Adam wondered what he had done to deserve such blind faith: because, of course, all good princes knew how to make a cake off the top of their heads. Not. He blamed himself. “And _plus,_ they could do with more cheer up there, with Alby’s big day tomorrow.”

Adam stared at the ingredients in front of him and couldn’t formulate an answer, let alone a polite question after Alby and His Big Day. A sponge? Like a _sponge cake_? No way could he take all of those separate ingredients and _easily_ make them into a _cake_. He wondered if Liz wasn’t lying a little, that this wasn’t even possible and it was a nasty test, acting like all the adults seemed to do in his life.

But, half an hour later and absolutely destroyed with flour, as he crouched in front of the oven door watching his first cake swell, his heart began to swell rather a lot, too.

It was still swollen as they iced it with chocolate, and even when they cut it onto slices and laid it out on a tray that looked very familiar – kind of like to one Adam had stolen sandwiches from the previous evening.

“Your name is Arthur,” Liz explained, fixing a beanie onto his head, in a much motherlier way than her son ever had when Adam was about to go out in public. The fake glasses next. “You’re my nephew.”

Adam almost said something as sarcastic as, “well, that’s original,” before he carried the trays out the back door of the house after her.

The farmyard was slightly further up on the hill. Adam found it hard to balance – the wellies he had been so kindly loaned were far too big for him – but nothing was going to happen to his cake if he could help it. The entrance to the main shed was around to the side.

At the door, Liz took his tray from him.

“I can still carry it,” Adam offered, but she shook her head.

“That would mean twenty introductions for you,” she said, nodding at the door. There was a racket inside, and voices between what he knew from TV to be distinct sheep noises. A _lot_ of sheep. “But there might be someone next door with the lambs, if you want to call them for tea?”

Adam was in the process of taking the fifteen or so steps to the smaller adjoining shed when he came across his first sheep.

He did not expect sheep to be so big. This one came at least to his waist. His limited knowledge on the subject also informed him that they were shy and skittish. This one did not budge. It was almost as broad as it was tall, and its wool did _not_ look fluffy and inviting but thick and coarse.

Adam took a step back.

The sheep took a step towards him. Adam decidedly did not like the way it’s eyes were set wide across its head, ogling him with tiny black dots.

“ _Shoo_ ,” he snarled. _Dignified_ , he thought to himself, furious. _Heir to the throne one day, trampled to death by sheep the next._

The sheep didn’t take the hint, and started towards him at a trot.

Adam didn’t even think to run; he was too busy digesting the idea that he was going to die at the hands of a rogue sheep – but he was saved by the corrugated door that was his destination screeching its way open.

The sheep didn’t know which way to run, its legs splayed and it darted – around Adam – and beyond. Adam didn’t follow it because – too late – he had his arms wrapped around himself bracing for the impact.

“Hey,” the person who had opened the door said, “are you alright?” Then, “who are you?”

It, thank _God_ , wasn’t Hendo. For a start, he was cheerful, and for another thing, he was short.

“There’s tea,” Adam cried out hoarsely, completely forgetting his alias even though sweat was making the fake glasses slide down his nose, “and cake!”

The guy leaned against the doorframe. “Why didn’t you say so?” The grin wrapped the whole way around his face. “We’re nearly done in here!”

Adam found his feet and stumbled towards the door.

There were _more sheep_. Smaller ones, patchier ones, lit up yellow in the light and unsteady on their feet like they were walking on stilts. Thankfully, the minute Adam came in the door they scattered to the other end of the room in a movement that Adam just stopped himself from mirroring.

 _Lambs._ That was the technical term for them, right?

Hendo was sitting on an upturned box in the middle of the room, and the other, smilier guy made his way over beside him, gathering a large box into his arms that rattled: full of glass bottles.  The space was small and badly lit, there was a heat lamp in one corner, and what looked like a dirty fridge in the other.

“Hey,” he asked, “who’s this dude? He says he has cake.”

“He’s my cousin,” Hendo said, without missing a beat. He looked up at Adam, squinting. It was only then that Adam realised he had one of the lambs half-pulled onto his lap, and he was holding a large bottle over its head that it seemed to be attached to. He nodded in the direction of the guy beside him. “This is Alberto.”

“Oh, hello!” the other guy said. “It’s Alby! I’m the vet!” Clearly, he also always spoke with an exclamation.

Adam gave him an awkward wave. His knees still felt weak, and he wasn’t sure about all these sheep, no matter how small they were.

“There’s cake,” he offered to the vet, “for you, specifically.”

“He’s getting married the day after tomorrow,” Hendo interrupted, as Alby was filling up with air to announce it with aplomb. He redirected his enthusiasm as disappointment in Hendo’s direction. And Hendo _grinned_.

That was _twice_ in one day.

“Congratulations,” Adam offered, “that’s exciting.” He felt the glare from Hendo that said, _stop being yourself_.

Alby shook his hand enthusiastically – the one he could free from holding up the box to take up Adam’s offer. He disappeared out the door, bouncing slightly as he walked.

Adam was about to say something – anything, really – but Hendo was already starting to right the lamb back on his feet. There was something about the movement that Adam couldn’t quite put his finger on, and it wasn’t the exasperated tone that Hendo then addressed him with.

“What was she thinking, bringing you out here? Go _home_ ,” he said.

Adam didn’t really know how to respond to that, so, already being exhausted from all that uprooting from his normal life, the baking, the near-death experience at the hands of a sheep, _Hendo, grinning_ , _twice_ : he went.

* * *

 

He had this irritating, twitchy need to tell Hendo that he’d made a cake when he came back in the door later that night. He didn’t know how to explain it. He’d known Hendo the longest of everyone here? Was that it? Did he just want to shove a giant slice under his nose and make him admit that Adam was actually, really, _unreal_ at baking?

However, Hendo’s expression put an end to all of that. Adam had even started to get off the couch, but he decided against it, and buried his nose back in the Nigella Lawson cookbook he was reading instead.

He heard Hendo stomp up the stairs and the sound of the shower running – water drummed on the living room roof above his head.

The tall man leaned in the door and waved. He was undisputedly Hendo’s father, they had the same kind of loping gait as he crossed over to the sofa, and yet he was so much more… _jolly_. Adam let out a reciprocating smile as he scrambled to his feet to shake hands.

Given the nature of the conversation that morning, he had not considered that _both_ of Hendo’s parents could be perpetually good-humoured. Everyone Hendo was surrounded by seemed to be perpetually good humoured.

Except, bizarrely, for Hendo himself.

“Brian,” Hendo’s dad announced, cheerfully. “Don’t mind him,” he said, gesturing up at the roof and the sound of water running full pelt, “he didn’t sleep very well last night.”

“Is that all?” Adam asked. _If that’s the case, when’s the last time he had a good night’s sleep?_

Brian Henderson shrugged. “He doesn’t like being home, and I think he likes it even less when he brings his work here.”

“But you have a lovely home,” Adam said, out loud and meaning it for real this time. Hendo’s dad beamed at him.

Adam helped to set the places for dinner. It was a habit he’d fallen out of, having no real cause for it anymore. In line with Adam’s baking, Hendo’s mum had made a stew, and his mouth watered at the thought – _real food_.

It was only later that he realised the water hadn’t been running upstairs for quite some time.

“Will I get him?” he asked, pointing to the stairs. “What can be taking him so long?”

Hendo was asleep. He lay sort of haphazardly, half-on and half-off the bed that Adam had slept in the night before. He was too long for it too, one of his feet dangled over the end, and he had some clothes bundled to his chest. If Adam had to make a guess: Hendo came in, changed and had then made the mistake of sitting down momentarily on the bed.

He thought about waking him up. He really did. It was now Adam’s bed, after all. But it seemed mean, and Adam didn’t like to think it was an inherent trait of his to be mean. Hendo was sound asleep, he had to be: his mouth drooped open slightly and he had turned his head into his elbow in an unconscious bid to block out the light.

Also, when he was asleep – a bit like when he was out on the farm helping his dad – he wasn’t on Adam’s back, so that could only be a good thing.

It became a more uncertain thing though after dinner. Adam had explained politely to Hendo’s parents that, really, he didn’t mind the couch and, really, Hendo probably needed the sleep more than he did. It meant that when they went upstairs – both still looking deeply troubled that Adam might get a crick in his royal neck - he got to polish off the rest of the cake.

Once that task had been completed to a satisfactory degree, he clambered onto the couch and rolled himself up in the blanket.

It took him to the count of ten to realise it was not going to work.

The couch was perfectly comfortable for sitting on in the daytime. However, somewhere near the top of Adam’s shoulders it lumped, driving a wedge into the back of his ribs and the air from one of his lungs. On his back, it pressed until his legs went numb. He turned, and he rolled, and nothing, _nothing_ , removed that one, godforsaken, errant spring.

He tried the floor next. Wooden and cold, it was unyielding and hard. And Adam had slept on floors before. His back creaked with the memory.

Was the only option _really_ to stay up all night? Hendo’s mother did have a large stash of cook books that he could flick through, enough to keep him busy for a few hours. He could always get some kip when Hendo eventually woke up.

As soon as the thought passed through his head he disagreed with it. His eyelids were already dropping from the fifteen frustrating minutes he’d spent trying to get comfortable. And he was so full of _cake._

Hendo wouldn’t know, he decided, crawling up the stairs. The only way Hendo would know was if he woke up. And if he did, Adam decided firmly, Hendo would be so embarrassed that he would never mention it again.

With this decided, he carefully moved around the end of the bed, around the edge of Hendo’s one, outstretched foot; and wriggled carefully – back first, because otherwise he would be watching Hendo sleep, and that would be decidedly weird - under the opposite duvet flap. He paused, if only to hear Hendo sigh deeply and continue to sleep.

 _This is_ much _better_ , he thought, curled up under the scrap of blanket. _A real pillow. No lumps! This is just-_

There was a flurry of movement: too fast to Adam to do anything about it, his nerves too shot for him to yell. In one turn a large arm had reached itself across the bed, across Adam, and pinned him down. Adam froze, horrified. And more, when Hendo rolled the whole way onto the bed behind him. Hendo’s bulk, his considerable bulk, was now in Adam’s _entire space_.

Any minute now. Any second and he was going to scream.

Adam’s space was important to him. Adam’s space had been important to him ever since he had learned what happened when he let people in it: that extra trust, the certainty of it. Adam could not, politically or emotionally, be this close to just _anyone_. Those ten inches surrounding his circumference were something he liked to try and guard as much as possible. With some exceptions: he didn’t count sex, because it was weirdly emotionally disconnecting, and more so when he didn’t let anyone touch him afterwards.

He braced himself, ready to twist himself free when Hendo’s arm tightened around him. Air was sucked from Adam’s chest as he was pulled right back into him.

 _Don’t panic_ , he told himself, feeling his own pulse rising, _don’t panic!_

Slowly, he tried to twist his head to discern the hold Hendo had on him. Hot breath flushed suddenly against the back of his neck.

Hendo’s breath was slow and ridiculously deep. _It’s like being suffocated by an elephant seal_ , Adam thought angrily, his jaw locked. _Slowly and painfully_. Hendo’s whole body rose with his breaths, but it didn’t quite become a snore.

Actually.

It was.

_Peaceful._

_Oh,_ Adam thought.

Really. Hendo’s breaths were slow and exactly in time with each other, they warmed Adam’s neck, they made Hendo’s ribs gently press into Adam’s back, shifting it into a comfortable arch. He was much softer than he looked: at the moment he felt like he had the density of a bean bag.

Hendo was also very… _warm_ , Adam decided. It was true. Despite the blanket, the previous night Adam had been cold and now he definitely was not. Hendo radiated warmth from the top of Adam’s spine the whole way down to where their knees seemed to have fitted together themselves. He was warm like a hearth, the same kind of warm that seemed to reach inside of Adam’s head and pull it to sleep.

 _He’s holding me,_ Adam thought sleepily. _It’s nice that he’s close._

The word drifted into his head. The one he had been searching for earlier, the one to do with the way Hendo had lifted the lamb he had been feeding.

_Delicately. He was being so careful with it._

_Oh,_ he thought, as he drifted, _oh_ no.


	3. Chapter 3

Remarkably, Adam woke first. It was remarkable because there was no stiffness in his shoulders, he was warmer that he ever remembered being and there was nothing nearly like discomfort in his ears or in his bones. Usually, such sleeping conditions rendered him unconscious indefinitely. There was always an alarm, a badly positioned pillow or a cold foot that had to prematurely end it.

“The princess and the pea,” Studge said, often, and not always kindly, during their service years when they had been on duty and Adam had kept them awake all night with his tossing and turning.

He decided, in the end, that it was the warmth that had woken him up. The back of his knees were sticky with it. And then he tried to move.

Hendo made a sleepy noise – _Hendo!_ Adam remembered, with sudden horrible clarity – and tightened around him. His hand curled tight into the duvet, turning it slowly into Adam’s. _He’s so warm_ , Adam thought weakly, trying to stay the thought. This was because it was mostly about Hendo’s hand. As he watched it, it tightened its grip again, stray fingers pressing into Adam, and relaxed with his sigh. In the gentle light, lines of soft blue veins ran up from his knuckles and faded into his wrist. His breath went the whole way down Adam’s back.

Somehow he had managed to get _even closer_.

Adam quickly scrapped the thought that this might have been in anyway conscious – Hendo _hated_ him, and he was also particularly annoyed by Adam’s late-night frolicking with dudes.

_Crap,_ Adam thought. _I’m trapped. Forever._

Hendo stirred again, curling around Adam some more. It especially bothered him because it made his chest kind of tight and also, namely, it wasn’t really bothering him at all.

Hendo’s breath changed now. His knees – pressed into the back of Adam’s – stretched, his body grew long, his forehead dipped to press into the Adam’s neck, right at the nape.

_Oh no_ , Adam thought. Again. Hendo whined softly as he pulled Adam with him into the stretch. _Oh Jesus. Just get this over with_.

Hendo stiffened, and in the same second, flew off Adam like he was on fire. Adam winced at the thud as he rolled straight off the bed and hit the ground.

He decided that no one would hold it against him if he pretended to be asleep this time.

He could hear the hard edges of Hendo’s limbs hit off the wood as he attempted to right himself despite the panic. Adam had never known him to panic – he hadn’t even really panicked when he’d learned about the assassination attempt. Well, not enough to flail around like a dying fish, because by the sounds of things that was exactly the case now.

And Adam couldn’t hold back the little smile.

There was a small grunt of pain as some part of Hendo smashed off the door in his hurry to exit. Adam allowed himself to roll over when he heard the bathroom door lock. He pulled himself across the bed – warm under his hands – and onto the floor, his feet landing on the pile of clothes Hendo had changed out of the night before as he stood up.

_It_ cuddles _,_ he thought gleefully, looking at the wall as though he could see right through to the bathroom. _It is good at it._ And the more he thought about it: _it has cuddled things before._

But Hendo was such a miserable git? Adam couldn’t fathom him in a relationship. Or that someone would let him close enough to cuddle.

_You did._

It was troubling. He wondered, with something that worryingly felt nothing like remorse, if Hendo had actually had a life he’d left behind before he’d dropped it all to run away with Adam.

_Nothing like remorse at all._

The frown was still on his face when he arrived downstairs. It was early. Really early; the light outside was more blue than grey. Adam wasn’t about to sleep again, despite the dull warmth that still lingered at the back of his neck, so he flicked on the kettle instead. It was just starting to hum when Hendo stomped down the stairs.

Adam opened his mouth to say something – he wasn’t even sure, just _something_ – but Hendo crossed the entire kitchen in three strides and came close to slamming the door behind him as he left. Adam leaned across the sink to look out the kitchen window, watched as Hendo forced on a pair of boots and stomped around the corner of the house in the direction of the yard.

The kettle flicked off, but Adam had already made his decision. He pulled on a coat and stepped outside.

After lingering nervously on the back step, hopping a little in his socks to give his toes relief from the cold ground, he reached for the previous day’s boots and slid them on. It was easy to follow Hendo’s heavy step through the mud, up through the yard, and around to the smaller shed.

He had started to pull the door over behind him when he saw Hendo, looking perplexed with one of those small sheep gathered up in his arms.

“What are you doing,” Hendo asked.

“What was that about?” Adam demanded.

Silence.

“I have to feed the lambs,” Hendo said, rigidly.

“Right,” Adam replied, “you know that’s not what I meant.”

“I really don’t.”

“We _spooned_ ,” Adam said, “and it’s _fine_.” _It’s more than fine!_ The back of his neck suddenly felt _much warmer_.

Hendo looked down at the lamb, and then back at Adam. “No we didn’t,” he finally said.

The lamb gave a small, pathetic bleat.

“I mean I get it,” Adam continued, “if you’re mad at me, because there’s someone you left behind… at home. Instead. It doesn’t have to count, but you have to admit it happened.”

“Nothing happened.” Hendo’s grip visibly tightened on the lamb and it bleated again. “There’s,” his voice caught, “no one.”

“ _Right_.”

“Never been anyone.”

“You’re allowed to enjoy a _cuddle_ , Hendo – “

“ _Sir_ – “

“- _Adam – “_

“I didn’t,” he finished firmly, his eyes down. He leaned over to place the lamb on the floor. Carefully.

That feeling was back, the one that wasn’t remorse. It clawed the whole way down his chest. _Jealousy?_ Was Adam jealous of… the _lamb_?

The thought stoked a sudden fear in Adam, and pushed his hands back through his hair. “Why do you _hate_ me?” he snapped.

Hendo did look genuinely surprised. “ _Hate?_ ” he echoed.

“Yeah,” Adam insisted, his anger only lasting until Hendo had scooped up another lamb and proceeded to tilt its head up so he could run his eyes over its face. This lamb bleated too, and Hendo gave its head a soft rub with the back of his knuckles before he looked at Adam again.

Adam’s knees felt weak.

Hendo paused. “Hate?” he asked again, still perplexed. His face was scrunched as though he’d never heard the word before.

“I wish you wouldn’t act,” Adam continued hotly, “like I’m not a real person. You’re meant to look after me, but you don’t give a crap about me. Right? I know you don’t. How is _that_ meant to make me feel safe?”

God, that was it, wasn’t it? When Hendo had held him, he’d finally felt safe? _Pathetic._ This was exactly why he’d stopped people from getting too close.

Hendo looked like he still had no idea what Adam was talking about. Adam almost would have said too much so, except that was absolutely not Hendo’s style.

“Then _what,_ ” Adam asked finally, holding out his hands, palms up, “is your problem?”

Adam was far away, but not far away enough from Hendo to miss the fact that his neck pulsed as he swallowed.

“I need to feed the lambs,” Hendo said finally. He moved in Adam’s direction, and too late, Adam jumped back before he realised that there were several plastic crates stacked behind him – clearly what Hendo had been aiming for. They rattled as Adam backed right up against them.

There was silence, as Hendo stopped, his eyes flicking first to the crates, and then back to Adam with arms wrapped around himself in fright.

“You’re afraid of the sheep,” Hendo realised suddenly. Incredulous.

“No I’m not,” Adam snarled.

The lamb was watching Adam with beady black eyes. It strained its neck, tasting the air in Adam’s direction.

Hendo moved again, and despite his best efforts, Adam took another quick step back. Back further into the boxes.

“Sir,” Hendo said, still amazed. “It’s a _lamb_.”

“I know what it is!” Adam hissed.

“Sir,” Hendo continued, very slowly, “you are on a _sheep farm_.”

“And if you want me to stay in the house, I can definitely do that.”

“It’s a _lamb._ ” Hendo stopped gaping at him suddenly. His expression changed to something Adam didn’t recognise. “Touch it.”

“What? No!”

“You don’t leave until you do.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do!”

“Sir,” Hendo suddenly seemed to remember himself, and his back straightened. He hesitated. “But its…” he seemed to struggle with the word, “… _cute_?”

“I don’t care,” Adam said, indignantly. The end of his declaration was cut off by some equally indignant squeaks from the corner of the shed. The rest of them were starting to wake up.

Hendo must have seen his eyes dart. “Just pet it,” he said, “quickly. You have to get used to them, sir.”

“Right,” Adam replied flatly. It suddenly occurred to him, as though to egg himself on, what Studge would think. Not that is mattered, as Studge, officially as his best friend, already knew that Adam was a colossal coward. Instead – with a great deal more effectiveness - he decided to focus on the long stream of thinly-veiled Brazilian curses that Philippe had aimed his way over the years, everything from arriving late to having to fill in Adam’s eye bags after a particularly harsh flu. _Get a grip, Lallana._

Hendo was so bloody far away. It took Adam six whole steps to reach him, watching the lambs crawling to their feet in the corner. One of them appeared suddenly at Hendo’s ankle and Adam nearly stopped. He took an extra deep breath, a mistake, because the smell of decaying grass hit him right in the back of the nose.

When he took the away everything else about sheep, he supposed; like the head, and the legs, they really did look very pettable. Almost like an enormously fluffy cat.

Carefully, he stretched his fingers out, _touched it_.

In the following seconds he came to two, very rapid and not at all welcome conclusions.

The first was that the lamb was not going to eat him. True, it wasn’t quite as soft as expected, but as Adam sank his hands down into its fur it did not even react.

The second, worse, conclusion was that when the word _soft_ finally did enter his head, it was about the line that ran from the point in between Hendo’s brows and down to the round tip of his nose.

It was suddenly there, right in front of his eyes when he looked up. Maybe it was because of how it had been pressed to his neck last night. _Soft_ , he thought again, as his eyes then did the dumb thing and, on that image, looked straight at his lips. _Stop!_ He now thought, urging himself to look absolutely anywhere else and coming to a third, awful, conclusion: that Hendo’s eyes were _really_ blue when they met Adam’s. Not like Klopp’s had been before – they were electric, like an x-ray – but calmer, darker, _softer_ ; the most fascinating shade of blue anyone’s eyes had ever been, right at that exact second.

He had been too caught up in these amazing discoveries that he failed to notice the lamb twisting itself in Hendo’s arms, and only did when it nudged its nose under Adam’s arm and into his hand.

Adam leapt back with a sudden yelp, and Hendo laughed. He laughed like he had the previous day, with his chin up as though to push as much as he could air out of his lungs when he did.

“Don’t!” Adam shrieked, but Hendo continued to howl, lifting one hand to bury his eyes in it. Alarmed, the other lambs came to life, running in circles around the small shed, bleating like tiny, terrified ambulances.

Adam didn’t know where to run, lest he stand on one. He wrapped his arms around himself in a panic. And Hendo was _still laughing_. It slowed as he bent to put the lamb down, and he clutched at his side as he wheezed.

“Stop,” Adam mumbled, because when Hendo straightened the laughter echoed in his features. Beamed from them, actually. Adam did _not_ like what it was doing to his pulse.

Hendo took big steps over errant sheep as he crossed over to him.

“C’mon,” he said, “I’d better leave them to calm down.” His hand moved delicately across the back of Adam’s shoulder. So softly. When he pushed it gently in the direction of the door, there was nothing Adam could do to stop himself complying. Hendo must have still been in Delicate Mode after minding the baby sheep, because he had never handled Adam like this.

The crossed the yard side by side. Adam still hugged himself. This was because every time he looked at Hendo, or thought about looking at Hendo, and how he still seemed to be carrying some of that very pure laughter around him; his stomach threatened to flip completely upside-down and it was _terrifying._

As they turned to the back door, he saw the signs of Hendo’s mum moving around in the kitchen. It made Hendo pause, even though Adam was already kicking off his boots.

“Sir,” Hendo grunted. Adam didn’t even bother to correct him. But he stopped anyway, electing to stare defiantly at the ground.

Hendo cleared his throat and continued. “This is the safest place you could be.”

Adam squinted up at him now, hoping to distort the image of his face, so he could forget that he suddenly found it beautiful.

“Sheep are awful,” he announced.

Hendo’s smile stayed. This was all so tragic.

“Nothing will happen to you while I’m here. Sir.”

Adam chose to enter the back door, then. He was afraid that if he stayed outside with Hendo any longer that he might just reach out and stroke him.

So, he arrived in the kitchen seconds before Hendo, which he hoped was just enough time to reconstruct his face into something more… neutral.

“Good morning,” he said, as Prince Adam, to Hendo’s mum at the counter. “Let me help you with that.” She was buttering toast, a _lot_ of toast, and this seemed like a sufficiently mind-numbing task for Adam to preoccupy himself with.

He waited for Hendo to arrive for several long seconds and didn’t like the way his heart sank when he didn’t follow. Was he now avoiding him?

“What’s the toast for?” he asked, to distract himself.

“I’ll be bringing out breakfast in a while,” Liz hummed. Then she seemed to notice Adam’s fixation on the back door. “Anything wrong?”

“No,” Adam lied. Then, “would you like some help?”

“Not with the toast,” she said kindly. “I have three chocolate sponge bases to make today. Could you help with that?”

Adam said, yes, he would, and wondered why on earth anyone would need three chocolate sponge bases. Then he realised, belatedly, that it must be out of kindness to keep his poor, traumatised mind distracted. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

* * *

 

For the rest of the day, Adam didn’t see Hendo at all. Yet, the more he wasn’t there, the most he seemed to sit, parked in Adam’s head. He’d _smiled_ at him, after all. And promised him that he’d always be safe. It seemed to take on a whole new meaning after the previous night. If that was what it was like to feel safe, then Adam had never really felt it before.

Liz didn’t give him much time to reflect on it. Adam’s afternoon passed in a haze of meringues and sponges, as she invented a new cake for him with every one he finished. He liked it though. He liked being in this kitchen that felt familiar already, all wooden and cosy. He liked being around Liz’s chirp, although it didn’t really distract him. While he was distracted from thoughts of potential scrapes with death, certainly, and his dad lying in a hospital bed was all but gone from his mind, Adam could just not seem to rid himself of the feeling of his bodyguard snoring enormously into the back of his neck.

He had to accept, much later into the evening, when even Hendo’s dad had come in from the fields and sandwiches had been devoured, he wouldn’t be seeing Hendo again that day. The bed bounced up against him when he flopped on it, feeling enormous and cold. His head was so tired and confused that he’d decided much earlier on in the day that he was certain to have a very long, very deep night’s sleep.

But it never came.

The line of his back was too cold. He tried several things to counteract it, and all of them were in vain. He tried lying on his back, but it felt weird, and spread, and exposed. Next, he tried wrapping the duvet cover around himself twice; but it made it strain across the front of his chest so tight that he had a genuine fear of being suffocated in his sleep. He even tried propping the pillow up against back as he curled up on his side, but the pillow wasn’t really long enough, or warm enough, and totally sucked as a substitute for warmth from a real human.

He had heard said human come in, several hours – several _years_ – after his first attempt at sleep. Adam could hear rain against the roof, and Hendo indeed squelched as he made his way upstairs. For one, long, hopeful moment; Adam thought he’d heard him come in; thought he’d feel the bed dip with two bodies. It lasted right until the bathroom door shut, and he was left feeling furious with himself.

He heard every sound as Hendo made his way around the bathroom, although he did sound like he was taking extreme care to be quiet: the belch of the shower gel bottle over the running water, the rub of the towel against him as he dried. The image of a bare Hendo tried to enter Adam’s head, but he shut it out with everything he had.

Later, as he continued not to sleep, he strained to hear the sound of Hendo’s deep breaths from downstairs, after he’d heard the couch spring ringing so clearly through the house. That maybe the rhythm would offer solace. He heard nothing.

* * *

 

“Reception?” Adam wondered out loud.

“Our vet is getting married,” Liz explained kindly.

“I knew that.” Adam thought, with sudden clarity: _well, that actually is a really good explanation for all of the cake we’ve made in the last day._ He held a full piping back in his hand, his role this morning mostly comprising mostly of having this kind of constant back up for one of Liz’s three-tiered monstrosities.

“In the middle of our busiest season,” Hendo muttered. It was the first thing he’d said to either of them since he’d emerged from the blanket of rain outside, a long strand of hair stuck flat to his forehead from the wet. He looked terrible, Adam thought, about the purplish hue the area under his eyes had taken over the last few days. But it couldn’t be the sheep that weren’t agreeing with him. The sheep were the closest thing Adam had ever seen Hendo come to actually _liking_ something.

“It’s always our busiest season,” his mum replied, measuredly.

“I can’t go,” Hendo said. “I have orders.” He gave Adam a pointed look and slid onto one of the chairs at the kitchen table.

“Well, Alby told your father yesterday that Adam is quite welcome to come too,” she gave Adam a fond smile, “or your cousin Arthur is, in any case.”

Hendo sat up straight. “Absolutely not.”

“Oh, please,” his mother retorted. “Let him have some fun. Also, eat your breakfast.”

“He’s under _my protection_ ,” Hendo growled, through mouthfuls of toast. “And while he is, he stays on this property. This town is too small and someone will notice.”

“It’s just one night.”

“I have worked _very hard_ on his cover for him – “

“I’m right here!” Adam protested, and they both came to a sudden halt. He got the impression that conversations like this were had quite regularly in his absence. “And I would love to go.”

“No,” Hendo said sharply. Adam glared at him.

Hendo glared right back.

“Just because,” Adam began delicately, “ _you_ don’t want to go, doesn’t mean – “

“It’s not about what _I want_ ,” Hendo said firmly, and in probably the most direct way he ever had at Adam. “It’s about what’s safest for you.”

“Then _relax_ ,” Adam said, “I’m _fine_. I’ll be disguised, and that always works. Come on. Can we just go? For like an hour? _Please_?” He couldn’t repress the urge for a beer or five. The taps were sure to be on at a wedding and he absolutely would not allow Hendo to take away such a relief.

It took until lunchtime for Hendo to concede. He was also the last in the car, maintaining a stony silence as they rocked down the road.

“ _Dad_ got to stay,” he snipped.

“He’s minding the sheep, remember?” Adam said lazily, from the back seat. “Someone has to.” The glasses were an unusual distraction as they bounced around the end of his nose. His neck was itchy as well: the only thing of Hendo’s that was half way reasonable was a woollen polo-necked jumper. He flat out refused to put the zebra stripes on again, and had placed that t-shirt aside for later ceremonial burning.

He was feeling weirdly upbeat – he was leaving the farm, for one, and second: Hendo had showered, shaved and was dressed in the only suitable dress clothes he could find, namely black ones. It was all a bit small for him, and it had made Adam think a lot in the last half-hour about the kind of physique his hired protection was required to keep.

Alberto Moreno’s wedding reception was being held in the town hall, and all the town and surroundings were present, if the sheer number of cars lining the street were anything to go by. Hendo’s mum parked around the back, a specially reserved spot for them as dessert providers. Adam had spent a wild afternoon decorating cakes, and in particular had spent a lot of time learning how to apply different icings. He had even finished the piping at the bottom of the wedding cake. Well, some of it.

Dinner was being rolled out as they arrived, and Adam was seated between Hendo and his mum at one of the long tables. Adam gave up trying to get conversation from Hendo, who was being a particularly stony wall for the occasion, and instead tried to limit his table manners sufficiently to blend in as he was introduced to the table. Mostly, he basked in how good it was to finally be back in a _real party._

Granted, this party was way better lit than the last one he’d been to – in that club, that had ended with that guy and his tattooed arms. It was much better than most events at the palace too. Everyone was happier, for one, and there was so much colour between streamers and fairy lights hung all around the room and from the basketball nets at either end of the space – just to make it look less like a town hall.

Adam thought it was lovely – there was so much going on, so much for him to watch that he could just sit back in his chair and think about _nothing_.

“Do you want anything to drink?” he asked, turning to Hendo.

Hendo looked quite alarmed. “I don’t drink.”

“Of course you don’t,” Adam sighed, getting up.

There was a stand in the corner that only sold one beer, but Adam didn’t really care as he handed over his change.

Hendo moved to speak when Adam placed two pints on the table in front of him.

“Don’t worry,” he added hastily. “They aren’t for you.”

Hendo made a throaty noise of disapproval. Adam smiled at him cheerfully and pulled his first glass to cradle it between his hands. He was about to bend over to slurp when he mustered up the courage to ask. Turning back to Hendo, he said: “lighten up, will you?”

Hendo blinked, as if to say _excuse me?_

Adam lowered his voice as he leaned towards him. “Your mum told me. How know you’ve known Alby, and all. Since you guys were _kids_. He probably thinks you came back just for this, you know. You should enjoy it.”

“I’m working,” Hendo snarled.

Adam took his first gulp of alcohol and immediately felt himself relax further into his chair. This was a much more sour brew than normal.

“Fine,” he said coolly. “I tried.” It only took a second, but he really couldn’t help himself: “Why _don’t_ you like it here?” And then to the steely glare: “this is a _nice place,_ Hendo. Everyone has been _nice_ , your parents are adorable and the countryside is stunning. I mean, you even _like_ the sheep. What the hell happened to make you resent it so much?” He couldn’t help himself: he leaned in to hear Hendo’s answer.

“Do you want to swap?” Hendo grunted. When that answer looked like it might be affirmative, he shook his head in defeat. “This town is too small. I left.”

Adam felt his head tilt. “To become a royal bodyguard,” he said, to finish joining the dots.

“To the army,” Hendo hissed, clearly insulted. Adam felt bad, because he did know this – formal training was a pre-requisite.

“… and then the palace staff?”

“To Afghanistan,” Hendo said, coldly. The conversation was over, and Adam’s night wasn’t long enough to dwell on it.

Yet when he looked back into his beer, the word _Afghanistan_ swirled around his brain. _He did a tour? But he never talks about it?_

In one corner of his eye, Hendo twisted his hand up to press it to his shoulder, rolling it back very carefully, like it was stiff in the joint. It was more movement than he’d made since he sat down.

By the time the speeches had rolled around Adam had already finished both of his beers and had returned with his next round. His head was already starting to feel a bit woozy around the ears, which was a good and a terrible sign. Good, because it was working. Terrible, because he was nowhere near the amount of alcohol he usually needed to consume to start to feel that way.

Alberto gave his speech last. He chirped through it, gesturing around the crowd, telling the story of how he met his bride, Lilia, how they’d known it was love, their baby, the happiest he’d ever been… he went on. And on. And _on._ Eventually, Adam stopped listening. He was sort of mesmerized by how Lilia _glowed_ at him, that he was beyond reproach in her eyes.

Adam thought, dully, about his own very certain wedding – to someone who would somehow tie in with foreign policy, be beautifully mannered and utterly presentable. Sure, it would be a pre-requisite that Adam _liked_ them. But _adore_ them?

_I’m jealous_ , he realised, _of their freedom._

He stared at his glass instead. In a sudden rage, he drained half of it.

Feeling suddenly woozier, he turned to snark in Hendo’s direction, because he was being such an easy target at the moment. Only Hendo wasn’t there.

He swung around so fast in his chair that his neck cricked. His eyes darted through the crowd behind his table – all clustered around the recently presented desserts – because Hendo was _never_ far away. Yet it was taking a surprisingly long time to spot his shoulders above the crowd and Adam was _worried_.

He swung around the other way to get the blind spot over his shoulder, and there was Hendo. He was back near the bar, and when Adam squinted, he saw that he was _smiling_. He was smiling at the woman beside him who had sleek, dark hair that ran the whole way down her shoulders.

The clawing sensation was back. It was back and it hurt. Miserably, Adam had to concede now that it was full-on jealousy. He was jealous because he’d been accidentally cuddled by his previously-detested bodyguard, he’d _enjoyed_ it, and couldn’t fathom the idea of anyone else getting so lucky.

He pitched forward to get Liz’s attention.

“Hendo’s having a good time,” he said, with as little waver in his voice as he could muster. He nodded to send her looking in the right direction.

The way Hendo’s mum’s face transformed into total delight was the one thing Adam had, until that point, feared seeing the most in his life.

“Oh yes,” she said smiling, “we have _always_ wanted those two to happen, you know.”

“ _Always_?” Adam croaked. _We?_ He looked over at them again. Hendo was _still grinning_.

Fury rose like heat, up through his chest and into his neck and cheeks, clenching them tight.

_I’m not jealous_ , he thought; although his beer-addled brain made it sound an awful lot like: _Jealous! Jealous! You are_ so _jealous_!

The lady Hendo was talking to – and Adam did think that she was a lady, all beautifully dressed and postured; he knew the signs – was smiling back.

He fought the urge to shrivel up into his chair. How could this day have taken such a terrible turn? Why had he decided _now_ that his least favourite person in the world was the one he wanted to hold him the most?

_Hold me_? He wondered, marvelling at the strength in the sentiment. Right then, Hendo pulled himself from the conversation, and looked over at Adam. Adam didn’t even have time to rapidly rearrange his expression. Hendo got him pining at full tilt, got a full face of desperation as Adam held back crossing over to him, needing to wrap his arms around him.

It was too late. Hendo knew, now. He _must_ have, because the smile melted clean off his face. And he was walking back over to him.

Adam couldn’t think fast enough, couldn’t think at all until Hendo reached him, and leaned over to mutter into his space.

“I went to check,” he said slowly, “that beer,” he nodded at the three empty glasses in front of Adam, “is local. It has the same alcohol percentage as a spirit.”

“Then why,” Adam tried to whisper back, but the words slurred into one, “do they sell it in _pints._ ”

Hendo’s lips pursed so tightly that they vanished altogether. “I need to get you home.”

Adam couldn’t believe his luck, watching Hendo mutter something to his mother, making her give Adam the worst in pitying looks. Adam did not care, because seconds later, Hendo was giving him his undivided attention again.

“Sir,” he said, his voice low. “I’m going to lift you up. Hold on to me.”

Adam had never been so happy to comply with an order. As Hendo righted him, he was able to curl the back of Hendo’s t-shirt into his fist and feel the warm under his knuckles. Hendo was right in his space again – the soft tightening and loosening of the tendons in his neck were inches from Adam’s lips and Adam was _living_.

Did crushes get this bad in a day? He had a lot of time to dwell on it, and a lot of time to lean into Hendo as he was helped out to the car. Hoisted into the front seat. He got a glorious eyeful of how the car lights threw dark shadows down Hendo’s cheekbones. He very inappropriately wanted to trace his fingers down those crevices, but his world was getting murkier by the second.

“That stuff,” he whined, “is _soooo_ strong.”

Hendo clambered into the driver’s seat and slammed the door behind him. The whole car rocked.

Prince Adam was forcing his way up through Adam’s larynx. Adam was too wasted to care.

“I ruined your evening,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Hendo grunted and the jeep rattled to life.

The cab lights had switched off before Adam tried again.

“You were having a really nice time, weren’t you?” he asked. “With your friend.”

There was silence from Hendo’s side, before he sudden announced, with some surprise as though he’d actually talked to people all evening: “ _Bec_?”

_A nickname_ , Adam thought, like a sucker punch to the stomach, _he must really like her if he gave her a nickname_.

The car rocked and he grabbed onto his seat. It began to climb up the hill. Adam was drunk, but not drunk enough to not recognise the extent of it. He felt every lurch in the car like parts of his body were one by one disconnecting themselves and floating away. He could barely connect his ears to his head at the moment. The fake glasses finally bounced off his nose and were lost on the car floor.

Suddenly: “You asked my mum,” Hendo said, scathing, “didn’t you? About Rebecca.”

Adam’s head bounced clean off his shoulders. “ _Mmmph_ ,” he moaned. “She said everyone was waiting for you to get together.”

“We didn’t even _date_ ,” Hendo replied. “She was my _best friend_ , and people have been telling us that since we were _eight_. _Stop listening to my mum._ ”

“At least you have a _choice_ ,” Adam retorted, thinking of the wedding, thinking of the glowing, thinking of Hendo’s arms clasped tight around his front. “About marrying. You get to do the love thing, some of us don’t.”

“That hasn’t stopped you,” Hendo snapped, “getting around.”

A massive vacuum opened up inside Adam’s chest and swallowed every one of his internal organs.

Suddenly, the assurance that Hendo had no intention of spooning anyone in what Adam had come to think of as _his_ place, paled.

The car began to climb at speed, speed Adam could have guessed was relative to Hendo’s sudden fury. At such speed that Adam had to grip his chair, but his drunk thumbs kept letting him down and slid easily off the fabric.

He managed to sulk until the door frame grazed his head, and he let out a yelp.

It was like Hendo had completely forgotten he was there. The car came to an almost complete stop, suspended pretty vertically.

“Sir,” Hendo let out the sound in horror, like gasp, “I’m so sorry, I – “

“Just _go_ ,” Adam wheezed, his head spinning.

“No, I – “

“Don’t,” Adam pleaded, “don’t say you didn’t mean it. I knew. I know.”

He felt Hendo attempt to turn around in the car. “Sir, I – “

“Home,” Adam commanded, rubbing his face in his hands to bring himself back to life. “ _Immediately._ ”

The rest of the drive passed in silence. Adam wondered if he was just too drunk to notice Hendo’s demeanour. Although, he did recognise that he had never really noticed it before.

_He thinks I’m a slut_ , he thought dully. _He doesn’t want anything to do with me_. _Of course. He always did. Why did I have to imagine something as_ dumb _as being with him?_

The car rolled to a stop, and through a crack in his eyelids, Adam saw the illuminated front windows of the house. _Finally_.

He reached over to open the door, but his legs didn’t get the message, and instead he dropped out in a heap onto the gravel.

It took a while for it to hit him. It wasn’t until he heard Hendo swear and leap out of the other side of the car that he really became aware of the sharp edges of the stones needling his hands, or that his knees were wet, or that the air in his lungs was considerably colder.

He rolled over to sit, holding his stinging palms up in the air in wonder. The alcohol in his blood must have disconnected the pain for a little while longer, in the light from the cab he could already see the red start to trickle down his hands.

“I can’t stand,” he said out loud, in awe.

“ _Adam.”_ Something soft pressed into his belly. He realised it was Hendo’s hand.

_I’m bleeding_ , he thought; vaguely. _He said my name._

Another hand curled around his opposite rib. He looked up and the yellow light from the car had thrown shade down the side of Hendo’s face, suddenly right next to him.

And then he was lifted.

It was probably because of how soft Hendo seemed to hold him. When Adam thought back, he was sure that started it all. That Hendo lifted him straight up like he weighed nothing, as delicately as he lifted the lambs. He liked to think that it had all just _happened._

Adam _didn’t_ like to think that it was because Hendo was pressed to him, and he was warm, and Adam had a sudden, irrepressible urge for Hendo to know that he _cared_.

So, as he rolled up to his full height, his arms fell on either side of Hendo’s neck, he reached forward on his toes and pressed his lips down over Hendo’s mouth. Then he tipped, and tipped, and the kiss broke when they stumbled.

Adams arms were still around Hendo’s neck, despite the steps backwards. And Hendo’s arms still clung to Adam’s middle.

Adam saw the opportunity – with his lips still attached to Hendo’s somewhere in his head - and kissed him again, twisting his body so they could press together. Slowly, Hendo’s hands moved so they could wrap the whole way around Adam’s torso, the squeeze of the inside of his elbows, spurring Adam to part his lips and kiss him properly.

Hendo’s lips were warm, and Adam could taste his alcohol off them. He forgot to breathe, lest it change the way Hendo clutched at him, or broke the slow rhythm of their kiss. Adam could not think, not at all, because as Hendo’s lips ran over his they pulled on them and the friction from it shivered the whole way down his spine.

His lungs caught up with him and took him by surprise. He gasped, ribs heaving against the wall of Hendo’s chest because there was no air between them to take in.

“Hendo,” he whispered, panting. “Hendo, I – “

Whatever he wanted to say was irrelevant because Hendo leaned into Adam’s mouth now, cutting off his words. Hendo kissed _him_ and with the magnitude of this thrill, Adam kissed back into him; kissed back with everything he had, with his tongue, and then his teeth as he pulled softly on the skin of Hendo’s lip. Hendo let out a strangled noise, and it was _needy;_ needy enough for Adam to consider what would happen if they kept up this wonderful kissing, and enough for Hendo now to pause.

Adam felt him freeze, yet, he was wound up – too wound up to let go of Hendo. He pressed his face into the side of his neck, Hendo’s fuzz burning up against his lips. Adam’s knees were wet where he’d been on the ground, cold and wet, but he couldn’t hold that totally accountable for his shivering. Hendo’s neck throbbed as he swallowed, and in between silent expletives, Adam thought: _what have we done._

“You can take me inside now,” he whispered.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The source of this incredible fanart!](http://nannalanoremo.tumblr.com/post/174472066191/for-lesbleusthroughandthroughs-wonderful-story)
> 
> * * *


	4. Chapter 4

Hendo hesitated, and Adam could _feel it_. Hendo’s body was pushed right up beside him, his muscles contracted back from Adam with his breath. Yet Adam still clung to him. How were they going to _move_?

Still tense, Hendo took a step backwards, dragging Adam along after him. Adam wasn’t sure if he could get his legs to move right; they seemed to tangle under him with the messages mixing between his knees and his ankles. Still the alcohol? Or the shock, maybe?

“Come _on_ ,” Hendo hissed, and it was right in his ear. “ _Please_.”

 _I can’t,_ Adam thought. _If I move from here I’m going to want to kiss you again. It’s not going to get me inside faster._

Somehow, Hendo managed to get him up the steps, lifting Adam slightly as he did and digging his fingers into his ribs. Adam’s shins still smacked off the steps, but he wasn’t really aware of it.

The light in the kitchen was on, and Adam tried to block it out by choosing the black of Hendo’s collar to hide his face in. Hendo grunted at the movement, his centre of gravity now probably completely displaced due to the amount of Adam clinging to him.

Adam rolled back, onto something he recognised due to the way it jutted into his back just under his shoulder blades. The couch.

And yet, he didn’t let go. He _couldn’t_ , and as he thought it he pulled Hendo down over him.

 _He has a smell_ , he thought, a little on the edge of consciousness, as he practically inhaled Hendo’s shirt. _Finally!_

“Adam,” Hendo said weakly. Adam felt his hands leave him, and instead push down on the sides of the couch cushion to lift himself up. Except he couldn’t, because of Adam’s grip. “Let go.”

Adam thought about not doing it. He thought about clinging to Hendo until they had to fall asleep together again. Then Hendo followed up with an extra weak “ _please_ ”, and Adam let go without meaning to.

He rolled on his side – as if he was actually capable of standing to follow, or something – to see that they weren’t alone in the house.

“You two seem pretty _attached_ to each other,” Hendo’s Dad joked, from over beside the kettle.

Adam felt the cold waves radiate from Hendo from all the way over on the other side of the room.

“I’m just saying,” Brian offered back, hastily.

“He needs to eat something,” Hendo snapped. “Do we have toast.”

Adam rolled on his front. He heard, rather than felt, himself moan just before he lost consciousness.

* * *

 

He came to at a different angle. He distinctly remembered having his face smushed into the couch before everything went black, and that his arm may have already been going numb; twisted as it had been under his stomach.

There was less pressure on it suddenly, but his neck was now placed right under the couch spring and may have dislocated two joints in the other direction.

He had these several seconds of wonder and peace before the sledgehammer made itself at home, right in the middle of his cranium. He whimpered as he curled into himself.

 _A blanket_? There was definitely something over him as he moved. It was soft when he sank his fingers into it, and he was able to open his eyes a crack to confirm. Someone, a saint, probably; had moved him into a rough recovery position and covered him in a blanket. Adam would have laughed, if the inside of his mouth didn’t taste like it’d recently been shampooed.

And, there: on the ground beside the couch was the largest glass of water that Adam had ever seen. If only he felt well enough to reach it.

He curled up some more and let his eyelids lift. He knew Drunk Adam didn’t sleep for long, but it was already bright outside. A small miracle, then, that he had woken up after _hours_ and _especially_ given the _most uncomfortable nature_ of the couch.

Hendo sat upright in the armchair across the room. Of course he did. He was asleep, having fallen into an awkward angle; bent over with his cheek resting on his closed fist and somehow still propped up by his elbow. It was unlikely that he had been asleep for long.

 _He kissed me_.

Adam waited for the remorse to hit. It always did, he always let someone into his space and regretted it. It would solve so many of his problems if suddenly he felt the urge to keep Hendo at several arm’s lengths for the rest of his stay on this godforsaken sheep mountain.

And yet there was none. Adam instead wondered at the softness of Hendo’s other hand as it rested across his lap, the soft wrinkles in his brow, that he hadn’t changed his clothes since the night before, that it was unquestionably him who had covered Adam in a blanket and left him to sleep.

 _I should be mad_ , Adam thought. _I should be furious that he thought it was okay to be so soft with me_.

He waited for the fury to come, too. It didn’t.

This was twice now. Twice he’d let Hendo be tender – both times, definitely by accident – into his space. Where this had left him miserable and embarrassed the morning after every hook-up, now…

 _But I hate_ everything _when I’m hungover_. _And yet. This is not affection_ , he thought sternly, at a weird blossoming feeling in his chest; that was actually pretty uncomfortable as it pressed down on his frail stomach. He paused. _But it’s not far?_

Hendo chose that moment to wake with a start, his cheek slipping from his hand and his breath cutting into a snort. Adam was so enamoured by the red creases his knuckles had left in his cheeks, that he didn’t even think to close his eyes again.

Hendo blinked at him, all shrunk back into the blanket. Adam could see his eyes wakening very, very slowly.

 _It takes him a while to wake up_ , he thought. _Doesn’t it_.

“’Morning,” he offered. Croaked.

Hendo gave his head a small shake. His hair was still gelled flat from the wedding. Adam had been getting used to it loose and sort of fluffy.

 _What is this. I_ like _his hair fluffy? How do I make this stop?_

“Alright?” Hendo said back, curtly.

“I’m dying,” Adam agreed. “Not a hell of a lot more than usual, though.”

Hendo’s head fell back into the plushy top of the armchair. “Christ,” he whispered, running his hands slowly down his face.

“Sorry,” Adam said, because this was definitely all his fault. There had totally been a point last night when the alcohol had started to hit him hard, when he could have stopped drinking, they could have stayed at the party and _would not have kissed_.

His feelings were still mixed on how much he regretted the last one. There was no doubt in his mind, though, that it wouldn’t complicate _everything._

“It’s my fault,” Hendo said, from behind his hands, “I should have known that wasn’t normal beer. _Shit_.”

“Was I that embarrassing?” Adam asked. He reached for the glass on the ground beside him. He missed. An attempt to lift himself up with one elbow was quickly scuppered by the fact that anything in his arm that may once have been a muscle was now jelly. “I mean,” and the words just fell from his mouth, just like that, like it wasn’t a big deal, “we did _kiss_.”

But it was a thing. A big thing for Adam, because he had never kissed anyone and lived such _fond_ repercussions. A _big_ thing for Hendo too, or so the brief, stony silence led Adam to believe.

Hendo leapt upright, rubbing his face again with a groan that sounded something like: “… _didn’t even make a_ week _,”_ as he pulled himself into the kitchen. He slammed down the lever on the toaster with force. Adam watched, with something like amusement, as Hendo stomped around the rest of the kitchen. Punched the switch down on the kettle. Ripped the bread from the cupboard.

 _I suppose_ , Adam thought, _macking the Prince isn’t in his contract_.

He gave sitting up another go, with a bit more success. He waited for his centre of gravity to stop swaying before he tried again. “We _did_ kiss. Didn’t we?”

Hendo seemed to only get more furious. He faced away from Adam, faced the kettle as it boiled, Adam could see the veins practically rising in his neck.

Normally Adam _lived_ to make Hendo furious. That was the sad thing about this all: he would give anything at this point for Hendo just to kiss him again.

“Can we,” the toaster popped, and the smell of it hit Adam’s nose. His mouth began to water, although his stomach began to churn, “talk about it.”

To give Hendo his due, Adam already kind of knew the answer to that one.

Hendo gathered the slices on a plate and turned back to march towards him. Adam wondered if only he’d held his tongue for fifty more seconds on the previous evening’s events would he have got butter on his toast.

It wasn’t that the plate was given to him, it was more that he caught it. Honestly, it wasn’t even that he caught it; his hungover reflexes sent slices of toast scattering about the couch.

Hendo had already left the living space and had turned into the kitchen again, over to the back door. He was lifting his coat from the hook when he turned.

“How are you?” he asked.

Adam wished it was, this time, a genuine question after his wellbeing. It was _infuriating_ to not have enough energy to confront Hendo about this properly.

“My kingdom for an aspirin,” he replied sourly. It felt like years since he’d used his favourite tag line.

Hendo seemed satisfied, although his brow then creased a little.

Miraculously, Adam understood. He picked up one of the toast slices and shoved the corner of it into his mouth.

With a satisfied grunt, Hendo disappeared out the back door.

Adam spat the toast out. His stomach was seriously churning now. He wobbled upright and limped over to the bin in the kitchen, making sure that after he’d tossed the toast in the bin he carefully placed the plate back on the table, as though he’d actually eaten it.

He changed his mind about going upstairs suddenly, leaning forward to look out the kitchen window.

Hendo was long gone by then. Obviously. Adam didn’t even know what he’d been hoping to see, really.

He had to crawl up the stairs.

 _I’m never drinking again_ , he thought, pulling himself upright in the shower. _Never. Ever._

He felt slightly more alive after that. The bed called to him as he got dressed, but he resisted, and he couldn’t even believe it. He was resisting the siren call of a hungover nap for _Hendo_.

 _But I have to talk to him. I need_ someone _to tell me what that was._

To his utmost dismay, by the time he had gingerly made his way back downstairs, Hendo was moving things around the kitchen: accompanied by his father.

“Liz said she’d help out in the town hall today, and get everything cleared up,” Brian said cheerfully. “We’re going to start on lunch!”

 _Nice move_ , Adam thought, half still with dismay, but half now with awe. _He brought his Dad in so I couldn’t ambush him. Yet._

With a small nod at Brian, he moved over to where Hendo was chopping tomatoes at the sink. He was kind of hoping a smart line would materialise in the five seconds it would take. His hungover brain let him down badly and he ended up right beside him, watching him handle tomatoes.

 _Romantic,_ he thought dully.

Hendo cleared his throat, and Adam did the thing again. The thing where he looked up and his eyes, quite against his will, followed the lines of Hendo’s face: this time his cheek, that it had a high, rounded edge and cast a definite shadow down the side of his face. And Adam followed it, right to where Hendo’s bottom lip curved out from his mouth.

It took him several seconds to realise that Hendo had spoken.

“Uh,” he tried, by way of explanation.

Hendo didn’t look at him, but concentrated very, very hard on his tomatoes.

“My right coat pocket,” he grunted.

Adam’s eyes slid past him to his coat, once again hanging by the back door. He gave Hendo another look that he didn’t return, again, as he moved past him over to the coat rack. It was the same jacket Hendo had unceremoniously gifted Adam when they’d driven here.

Adam didn’t know what he was expecting when he reached into the pocket, turned awkwardly so he could watch Hendo not watching him back. His hand closed around plastic wrapper, around a box, and he pulled the aspirin out and balanced it on his hands for several seconds without really _seeing_. It was then that he saw the thin film of plastic still around the outside of the packaging, the price sticker still sitting slightly crooked in the top corner. Then he understood why Hendo had headed out in his work jacket and not in the overalls he had become so used to seeing on the farm.

 _He went to buy me aspirin_.

When he looked back at Hendo now his jaw may have been slightly unhinged. Warmth blossomed, in his neck, in his chest; an unusual wave of emotion that probably stemmed from his hangover. And that _kissing_. But whatever. It didn’t change the fact that Adam was now speechless, and Hendo was still concentrating far too hard on those damn tomatoes.

It was just as well Adam had a reason to go back to the sink, scooping up a glass on the draining board and filling it with water.

“Thank you,” he managed. His voice may have wobbled. _I am definitely quoting_ Richard III _at you more often._

Hendo paused, and went back to chopping his tomatoes. Adam had a feeling that was the only acknowledgement he was going to get, yet it did nothing to stop that remarkable buoyancy in his chest. Nor did it stop him from trying again.

“No really,” he said, a little more confidently. “Thanks.”

This time Hendo paused, giving him a side eye that most definitely translated to: _don’t mention it. Ever._

Satisfied, Adam turned around to offer his services to Brian; who was scrambling to look busy as though he had been marvelling at the scene previously unravelling in front of him.

* * *

 

Things did not improve before dinner, and during dinner, they became worse.

Adam was well on the mend by the time the four of them sat down around the kitchen table together. It was a first, as neither Hendo nor Adam were sulking, really, and there was no wedding. The Jalfrezi Hendo and his dad had whipped up – completely without Adam’s help, as he didn’t feel like he had to tell them that curry was not on his list of accomplishments – was on the table when Liz arrived home and decided to talk non-stop about the night before.

Adam wanted to give her his full attention, he really did, but Hendo was now wearing the weirdest ensemble that was apparently made up of the remaining clothes in his wardrobe that fitted him: a mustard yellow hoodie, that he wore under a firebox-red plaid shirt. Adam was sure shirts were for wearing under hoodies, but he knew that given what he’d shown up here first in, he couldn’t comment. Besides, all those layers made Hendo look astonishingly cuddly, and stubble was starting to show again after yesterday’s horrendously clean shave.

So Adam feigned attention (“your mum is _so nice_ ,” he’d said, in one of his many attempts to engage Hendo in a conversation in the cramped kitchen that afternoon), and relaxed back into the chair even as he mixed up his huge plate of curry and rice. He hadn’t eaten since his attempt at toast and he was _starving_.

He was looking forward to eating, _so_ looking forward to it, right up until Liz said: “I’m glad you and Rebecca still get on so well, Jordan.”

… And Adam’s appetite went again. Hendo’s fork hit is plate with such speed and clatter it was quite possible that he’d full on thrown it.

“She _was_ my best friend,” Hendo said, testily.

“We _know_ ,” Liz said breezily. “But it has been a while since you two saw each other. Did you know she’s working in the city now? Anyway, we –

“ – _we?_ ” Hendo asked, with the air of someone who was aware of impending doom.

“ - decided that you two might like… to go for a coffee next week together. And,” she winked, “catch up properly. There’s a coffee place open in town now, did you know? It’s very cosy.”

“ _Mum_ ,” Hendo snapped, but not at all affectionately.

“ _Liz,_ ” Brian now added. There was something serious in his quietness, something so out-of-sorts with his personality, that Adam had to look up.

Something clutched at the base of this stomach. It tightened and tightened: Brian had been here, hadn’t he, when they’d arrived last night? He’d only have to look at the window and he would have seen everything.

This sudden, unexpected dimension to the whole fracas sent something paralysing up Adam’s spine: fear? Or was it more embarrassment. Anyway, the smell of curry truly revolted him now, and he pushed the plate away on a reflex with enough force for it to squeak as it skidded across the top of the table.

“Uh,” he said, taking a moment to realise what he’d done. “I’m.” He looked around the table for help, but was met with stares of equal astonishment. _Great_ , he thought, _Petulant Prince strikes again_. “Still sick. Can’t.” He stood up quickly, the chair legs screeching back across the tiles. “Sorry.”

He turned, and took the steps two at a time. Maybe the conversation would continue, but at least he wouldn’t have to listen to it.

 _What’s bothering me the most?_ He wondered, electing to sit at the edge of the bed rather than get into it. It all came down to Hendo. It bothered him, really bothered him, at the sudden rush of safety and trust that his just being there gave Adam. That maybe it had always been there. That maybe Adam had been taking it for granted, that somewhere in there Hendo cared about him, properly. And now Adam cared right back, right in time for some childhood sweetheart to come in usurp him?

 _God,_ he thought, _why did it have to be_ Hendo.

The more he thought about it though, and he did, he did a lot of thinking as he rolled on his back and stared at the ceiling; it didn’t seem like that strange of a choice. He was sort of objectively attractive. He had been around the palace long enough to understand Adam’s world. Probably long enough to understand Adam, although he seemed to disprove this more often than not.

And he was kinda pretty.

Adam could have kicked himself for only noticing it _now_. But Hendo was: he had a whole high-cheek boned, plank shouldered thing going on and his eyes were all stupid and blue.

Adam totally, utterly and absolutely had a crush on his least favourite member of his security team. He was in hiding from an assassination attempt and the next in line to be the figurehead of an _entire country,_ but no, this was now the most serious, most complicated problem that he was ever going to encounter and he was going to have to solve it. All by himself.

Dinner continued downstairs in angry whispers. Adam thought of his unfinished plate a little guiltily, a little _hungrily_. His eyes started tracing the outline of the rafters above his head, and he began to count how many of them there were. Then, he began to count how many times he’d counted them.

Eventually, after a mind-numbing eternity, he heard two sets of feet climb the stairs. More hushed whispers in the bathroom. Heard the bedroom door close down the hall.

He sat up.

Confrontation hadn’t really worked so far today, he reasoned, as he wandered slowly down the stairs again. _But the very least I’ll be close enough to him to give myself some peace. I’ll get to be near him. And I’ll get to grab a banana sandwich. And I’ll get to be near to him._

Hendo had been sitting at the kitchen table, glaring angrily into his cup of tea and he jumped as though Adam was the last thing he expected to see coming down the stairs. He jumped to his feet and hurried back over to the sink.

At least Adam could be comforted, then, that with whatever weird spell had broken between them, Hendo didn’t exactly regard him with neutral eyes, either.

“Hey,” Adam said, pleaded, as he reached the last step and padded over behind him. He had a half-formed plan this time, although it was well recycled; but tip-toeing around the issue just did not seem to be working for him.

Hendo seemed to be fiddling with the lid of the kettle, as though there wasn’t a full mug of tea on the table, and as though he had ever made Adam a cup of tea in his life before. Most likely, the first thing he had thought to grab. Adam moved up next to him, turning so with the right manoeuvre he could sandwich himself between Hendo and the sink and lift his chin to stare right in his face. Instead, he pressed up to the outside of Hendo’s elbow where it blocked his path, but like, close enough.

Pressed harder.

Slid his shoe through the gap between Hendo’s shin and the cupboard.

Set it down on the ground between his feet.

The message couldn’t have been clearer, really. Adam watched the flush grow – it started right at the tops of Hendo’s cheeks and spread: it spread down those wonderful, arching ridges of his face, mottling where it rounded; but also back, and up through his ears until they glowed.

Adam had thought he’d say something cool, again. Something like: “I’m not leaving until we talk,” or even “what the actual fuck is happening”. Instead, weak now with how Hendo’s embarrassment dug at his chest, he whimpered: “kiss me.”

Hendo made a gargling noise when he swallowed, staring into the sink.

“I can’t do this,” he said.

Adam was desperate now, close enough to see Hendo’s neck contract with his words. Hendo obviously gave off some chemical that Adam’s body was nigh-on bananas for and it made it impossible to contemplate any eventuality from this exchange that _wasn’t_ kissing.

“Why?” he croaked.

“You’re going to be a King,” Hendo hesitated, “and I’m an _employee_.”

Adam’s voice was stretched so thin he was sure if he had to say much more it would snap. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters,” Hendo said, quietening to a whisper. “I _can’t._ ”

“ _Please_ ,” Adam’s fingers had stretched to either side of Hendo’s ribs, twisting into red plaid. If Hendo wanted to leave, he decided; if he didn’t want to be having this conversation he would have already hastily moved himself to the other end of the room, like he usually did. Hendo never hung around for pleasantries, let along bargaining. Maybe he, like Adam, was a little bit curious under it all.

“Why,” Adam tried again, pulling at him softly.

“I can’t,” Hendo tried again, his mouth moving differently around the word, “be one of your conquests.”

“Conquest,” Adam repeated, dully. He realised, belatedly, that this was about his club hook-ups. _No,_ he thought, _no, no, no – this is_ not _like that._ He struggled with the phrasing for several seconds, different versions struggling to rise up past his heart beating against this throat. “Do you ever remember me,” he said, “wanting more from those. Like this.”

Hendo faced him now, putting the kettle down in the sink, reaching across to place one hand on the other side of Adam. Breathing now against his chest.

“I would lose my job,” he murmured. Adam thought: _his eyes! Are so blue! His eyelashes! Are so long!_ “I wouldn’t be able to protect you.”

“You hate your job,” Adam pointed out.

“I don’t,” Hendo replied, and there was pain in his surprise, “ _hate_.”

The air changed. Adam felt the pull, electro-magnetic, unbeatable, between his lips and Hendo’s. He didn’t know if it had been there last night, or if it had materialised out of Adam’s longest day of perpetual want. He knew when he felt it that they were going to kiss again and against his will his grip tightened onto Hendo, their chests knocked together, knocked a surprised breath from Hendo’s mouth and it landed, warm, on Adam’s lips.

And maybe because kissing was a certainty now, maybe because Hendo, like Adam, was slowly letting his memory slide under the circumstances: Hendo only hesitated briefly before he kissed him this time. As it grew, hands slid up and over Adam’s cheeks. Hendo’s palms pressed slowly into them and Adam let out a sigh when his mouth opened.

Adam didn’t know why he expected it to stop. It was too nice, too slow. He wasn’t used to it. The kissing didn’t dissolve into a washing machine experience, nor did he feel like he was being led in it. It was _nice_ kiss, and he wanted to tell Hendo when it petered out.

Instead, as Hendo curled away from his chest, and Adam became aware of the angle of the edge of the countertop digging _right_ into the curve of his back; he suddenly had a wild idea.

“My radiator’s broken,” he panted, his cheeks pressing more into Hendo’s palms.

Hendo’s eyes were slow to open, his eyelashes almost long enough to brush off Adam.

“Your radiator?” he repeated slowly. There was a small tremble in his voice, and Adam twisted his shirt in his hands to bring him close again. “You don’t have a radiator.”

Adam found his mouth in an effort to silence that warm, blossoming feeling in his chest again. Dependable, dependable Hendo. How did Adam know he’d say that?

“You don’t,” Hendo whispered again, confused, “have a radiator.”

Adam had been on his toes so he could kiss him. He reclined back, Hendo now out of his reach. “Upstairs is cold,” he whispered. “Help me with it?”

The air was light when he stepped away, one hand tugging Hendo along by his shirt.

Hendo was weirdly compliant, may a little in shock, as Adam dragged him towards the stairs.

“We’re not - “, Hendo began, coming to a firm stop just before he climbed the first stair.

“ - _no_ ,” Adam turned around quickly. Faced with Hendo at eye-level that urge to kiss him returned, it seemed to pull now right from the base of his spine.

Hendo paused. “ _Adam_ ,” he whispered; the word was soft, rolling off his tongue like it was an old habit. Except of course, it was a brand new experience, and Adam himself could never have imagined that it would feel so _good_ to hear Hendo’s mouth being so gentle around his name.

He came back down a step, and considered giving in and kissing Hendo again. What a weird habit to have developed in a day. He could see his reflection getting bigger in his eyes.

“It’s not that,” he promised slowly, “I didn’t want you to kiss me because. Uh. I just want you to help me. With the heating.”

“How?” Hendo asked, a little hollowly. It did hurt. Adam didn’t mean to play with him and for it to _hurt_. Hendo was like no one else he had been with before. Normally, teasing was a given, it was all part of the _game,_ but he didn’t want to chase this soft side of Hendo back into his shell. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself.

“Remember the other night?” And because Hendo then spent too long looking like he was trying to figure out whether or not this was a trick question, Adam added: “When you held me.”

Hendo didn’t breathe, his chest rigid under Adam’s hand.

Adam swallowed. “Do it again,” he murmured. “ _Please_.”

“I don’t –“

“ – I _know_ it’s not… appropriate. In the rules. It… whatever. Alright?” Adam was tripping over his words attempting to explain himself. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that when you did, I was warm, and your old room is freezing, and I want you to do it again. Yes,” he said, watching Hendo’s eyes widen, “I _want_ it. _Please_.”

There was silence. Adam still clung tight to Hendo’s shirt.

“You,” Hendo started incredulously, “want _me_?”

“ _Honestly_ , you want to sleep on that couch? In the _cold_.”

“It don’t feel it,” Hendo said simply. It was a lie, it was definitely a lie. Tiny creases had started to draw his brows together. Then, “are you _sure_ you want that?”

Adam let out a huff and descended a stair. He wished it wasn’t petulant. “ _Please._ ”

“Okay,” Hendo agreed, and seemed to silently add something along the lines of: _because it’s for you._ And he followed Adam upstairs, down the hall, into the back room, in silence. Adam let his hand trail behind him, in the minuscule hope that Hendo might try and catch it. But who was he kidding?

 _This is surreal_ , he thought, climbing into the bed to face the wall. _This is so… upside-down. It has only been a_ day _._

He waited for Hendo to climb in after him. He didn’t. Adam could almost sense him hesitating, somewhere near the door.

There was another few seconds of silence.

 _For the love of God, stop questioning it. Then_ I _might start questioning it._

His chest swelled when he felt the other edge of the bed dip. Hendo’s knees slid up to nestle behind Adam’s first, seemingly the easy part. He was finding it much harder to arrange himself around Adam’s top half, his hand balancing carefully just under Adam’s elbow, pressing up close, faltering, edging away again.

“Um,” he said, very warm.

Adam wanted to tell him to come closer, but he was still afraid that he might scare him off, despite all that kissing.

He eventually settled. He wasn’t as close as the previous night, but Adam was satisfied: even with his breaths shallow, like he was still afraid to touch Adam too much, Adam could still feel the press of his chest against his back, and now that he was ready for it, he relaxed under the touch, even wiggled back a little to fit under the curve of Hendo’s elbow. It was enough for Hendo to let out a choked noise, that sounded a little too much like “ _sir_ ”.

“Can we talk about how weird this is in the morning?” Adam murmured. This time, he could stretch his fingers around the top of Hendo’s hand. Again, he wasn’t sure if it was out of affection, or in case he might bolt. He didn’t know why he might expect Hendo’s hands to not be soft – they had, after all, just been pressed against his face – but they beat warmth in Adam’s freezing ones.

 _Oh_ , Adam thought, a lot sooner than the last time he’d found himself in such a situation, _this is nice. This is not even a little bit weird. This is_ really _nice_.

***

He woke up in more or less the same position, but it took his hand tightening around Hendo’s for him to realise where he was _exactly_.

Hendo breathed, behind him. His chest pressed into Adam’s back, making it arch slightly.

 _Oh,_ Adam thought.

Would they really have to talk about this? He really hoped they wouldn’t, that they could just wake up and continue this cuddle. That it would be easy. Like, it was already kind of scary that kissing Hendo had been so _easy_ : not that it had been a simple thing to convince him to do it, because it hadn’t; but that he liked the idea.

 _Why_? Why had his dumb body latched on to a member of his security personnel, with whom he was imprisoned on a mountain in the middle of nowhere for the foreseeable future? Who had the personality of a brick wall? And _not_ , as everyone else in probably the entire world would have preferred, one of his parents’ many diplomatic set ups? It wasn’t that they had been _bad,_ because they had all been reasonably pretty, and good company. It wasn’t that his parents were _mean,_ they had really tried hard, so Adam could be happy.

Or, for God’s sake, even that he could have connected with one of his half-decent one night stands. Except, and this was the point that was _particularly_ bothering him as he lay all wrapped up and snug in against Hendo, he hadn’t felt wrapped up and properly snug with _them_. He didn’t even want them close to him, really, because at that point he wanted fun, and not, as it were, _cuddles_.

“Hendo,” he whispered. He gave his hand a small shake. “Hendo. Are you awake.”

As anticipated, Hendo made a small rumbling noise and tightened his grip around him. Adam thought his lungs were going to burst as the grip reached its top squeeze. But only in a wonderful way. Oh, how he had been wasting his life up to this point, purposely avoiding this feeling.

Hendo’s hand tugged itself free, and Adam let it with only a little resistance. When Hendo sat up, he turned.

“Morning,” he said, is voice catching at the dry back of his throat. And then he grinned: Hendo was rubbing his face, rubbing his hair back into place where it had fuzzed to one side and seemed to be struggling to get his eyes to open. And, then, seemed to be struggling with the concept of Adam all stretched out on the bed beside him.

 _Blue,_ Adam thought.

He made the move to kiss him again, but Hendo backed off the bed in one smooth move. He shook his head a little, as if to get rid of a thought.

“How did you sleep?” Adam asked, as Hendo back out the door now, still rubbing his head.

Unfortunately for Hendo, he had already given in to Adam being particularly persistent. So, Adam got off the bed, and followed him, stretching as he wandered down the stairs.

Hendo retrieved the kettle that he’d left in the sink. Adam watched as he pulled two mugs from the cupboard, two teabags, feeling his smile _hurt_ this early in the morning as it pushed his cheeks past the edges of his face.

“Thanks,” he said, when Hendo handed the tea to him. He took a tentative slurp. It wasn’t nearly milky enough, but they could work on that.

Hendo seemed to barely register his words. He did look – and sort of had, since yesterday – a little as though he’d been slapped in the face, a lot like everything that was happening wasn’t really registering in his head, and rather that he was mentally grasping at it all, trying to retain some of it.

“I know I said we should talk about it,” Adam began, falteringly. “But did you even… _want_ any of that? Or was it sort of just happening to you.”

Had he inadvertently traumatised Hendo? He despaired suddenly. He didn’t want to be that kind of douchebag.

Hendo looked even more confused for several long seconds. Then he shook his head, wordlessly.

Adam took another slurp of tea. Hendo’s hands were clasped tight around his own mug. Raised, blue veins criss-crossed on his wrists like well-rooted ivy stalks.

“Have you – “, Hendo began. Then he paused. Ripening. “This is a mistake. Isn’t it.”

It was Adam’s turn to vigorously shake his head, not able to properly elucidate how much of a mistake this _wasn’t_.

“You’ve latched on to me,” Hendo said, “because I’m your only option out here. Right? There’s no one else for you to – “ he paused.

“Chase?” Adam offered. “Thanks.” He tried to deliver the word with as much venom as possible, but instead it came out like he’d just been stepped on.

More silence. Adam stared straight ahead, out the window.

“I know you’re weird about it,” Adam said. He thought back to all the haughty looks as he climbed into the car in the morning, on all those foreign streets.

“I’m not,” Hendo said, as though Adam had offered any kind of context, probably answering his own thoughts.

“It’s weird for me, too,” Adam tried now. “I don’t know how to… handle you?”

Hendo made a surprised noise.

“Yeah,” Adam continued on, pleading, “tell me what to say,” in his peripheral vision, Hendo moved; “for you to believe me.”

Hendo was in front of him now. Frowning.

“You _like_ this?” Something about the way Hendo entered his space meant Adam was going to get kissed. Adam wasn’t sure what to do, all caught up with his arms wrapped around himself again. He was so weak for it.

Hendo took his time, studying Adam. His brow started to unknot, little by little. He came closer still.

Adam grew roots. Nothing could have moved him. He would have waited for decades for Hendo’s head to dip closer like that, for his lips to make themselves carefully at home against his again. His arms unwound slowly and reached for Hendo’s sides.

Just as they touched him, the tension broke, fell apart like it had melted in a sudden rain. They turned away from each other, but Adam was laughing, and when he rubbed his face his cheek beat against his hand.

Hendo was laughing too. Gloriously. At the ceiling. How loose his shoulders seemed. Adam had a vague feeling, like something had passed, like they were midway across a threshold and it was too late to turn back. Something released in Adam’s neck, watching the end of Hendo’s nose turn slightly pink to match the rest of his face.

Hendo looked at the stairs again, although his expression did not change. When he met Adam’s eyes again, really met them, Adam liked to think they were shining a bit.

“I’m going to check on the lambs,” he said. “Come with me.”

Adam took the deepest breath he had ever taken, and followed.

* * *

 

He followed Hendo to the lamb shed, in what was worryingly becoming hard encased in his daily routine. He still decidedly did not like the small sheep as they darted around his feet. But Hendo liked them, and so, in this new world filter he lived in; he decided that if Hendo liked the sheep then they couldn’t be _all_ bad. And he must have been very fond of the little sheep, he decided, because he was smiling little smiles at each of them.

“They’re Herdwick,” he said suddenly, suddenly enough for Adam to jump. He scooped a lamb up into his arms again. Adam noticed, for the first time, that they were all different sizes. The one Hendo held was for sure the smallest.

“Excuse me?”

Hendo smiled softly. “The sheep. The breed – it’s called Herdwick.” He cleared his throat and looked up at Adam. He was clearly inviting him over. “They’re really rare,” he said, when Adam didn’t oblige. “So we try and wean the lambs early to stop them getting… underfoot. We also have to be really careful about orphans.”

“Orphans?”

“Sometimes the ewes just don’t take.” With his lamb, Hendo rubbed a line between the lamb’s ears. It struggled a little less in his grasp. “That’s one of the reasons why someone always has to watch the sheep.”

Adam wasn’t up to date on sheep terminology, but that didn’t seem to matter to Hendo, who kept _talking_.

“They’re a good breed, you know,” he crooned at his lamb. “They don’t wander up the mountain too much. Their wool isn’t great.” Adam found this surprising, as there appeared to be _so much of it_. “Mostly it’s used for carpets.”

There were several seconds of silence, where Adam watched Hendo’s hand gently stroke the lamb. How careful it was.

“I have to be in here at least once every eight hours to feed them,” Hendo crooned.

“I’ll help.” Adam said the words but he did not think them. He forced himself not to retract them, although he was tempted. Hendo looked surprised enough to even be shocked, but then again, a lot of things had been happening in the last few days that he could not have envisaged so Adam offering to feed a little sheep in no way could be the most pressing.

“You will?” He asked, a little flatly.

Adam moved over to him and held his arms up.

Hendo hesitated. “You have to be careful. They’re delicate.”

“I _know_.” More like noticed the way Hendo held them with such care. Adam was almost really jealous.

Hendo made to come closer, but he paused again. “You don’t like sheep.”

_But I like you. Rather unexpectedly._

“Like you said,” Adam replied instead, “I’m living on a sheep farm. And I think you’re going to be short a vet for a while, aren’t you?”

Hendo let out a half-astonished, half-amused snort. “It’s _delicate_ ,” he made a point of saying, _again_. He started to lower the lamb into Adam’s arms. In doing that same process, it meant he angled his body right up to Adam, and their arms sort of became a little tangled around the lamb as well as each other. Adam felt Hendo flush – the air he breathed in was instantly very hot – but it was fine, because his throat had gone all sticky. He now really wished there wasn’t a wriggly, literal ball of wool snug between them.

He was very grateful though that, whatever this was, they’d both silently agreed to play along with it.

“This one,” Hendo said. The lamb. He was talking about the lamb. Adam’s eyes zoomed out from the mesmerising round tip of his nose, where he had been drawn by his really long eyelashes. Hendo’s, not the lambs. “Is our smallest. We’re still hand weaning him.”

“Right,” Adam said, because that needed an affirmation.

Hendo moved away and the lamb was a _lot_ heavier then Adam thought it was going to be. It twisted after Hendo, _whined_ after Hendo, scrabbled its spindly legs in his direction in an attempt to paddle through the air. Adam laughed.

Hendo had been lifting a bottle from a box in the corner – it opened up and revealed itself to be a fridge - and snapped around.

“I mean,” Adam snorted, “ _same_.”

He enjoyed with absolutely everything he had just how easy it was to made Hendo _redden_. At this point, Adam wondered if he could direct anything at Hendo at all and he’d blush; and Adam knew the path already. It would start at the tops of his cheeks, down towards his jaw, then over the crest of his ears.

“Come here,” he said to Adam, and the lamb, and both were only too happy to oblige. The lamb, though, was probably more interested in its breakfast at this point.

“You had to give him to me when it was going to get complicated, right?”

Hendo reclined back onto a hay bale in a corner of the shed. He was still red.

“Um,” he swallowed, when Adam slid right up next to him, pressing up to his knee. That’s what he wanted, right? Or he would have opted for the two boxes, like the last time Adam had seen the lambs being fed.

The lamb latched straight onto the bottle when it came close to within its reach, galloping over Adam’s lap in the process. Adam managed to hang on, just about. At least now he’d found a solution to the lambs chasing after _him_. Hendo’s face relaxed a bit, watching the lamb clinging to the bottle as he tipped it vertical over its head.

“It’s,” Adam began, unable to name the feeling he felt, because he was very aware that the being he held was very, very small; and there was something endearing in its perpetual neediness, “they need our help,” he nodded at the other lambs, who hadn’t seemed to notice that it was breakfast time, “or else. Right?”

Hendo nodded, the edges of his mouth gently nudging up: he was pleased, _pleased_ , because Adam was starting to finally understand why Hendo wanted to spend so much time in here. Almost.

Hendo leaned, his arm balancing against Adam’s side as it slid to the space behind him. Adam couldn’t even hide how charmed he was. He felt it radiate from every pore on his own face. Hendo was going red again.

 _Give him time_ , Adam thought, _he’s already coming to you. Slowly._

And with that thought, Adam was _thrilled_.

Not even that slowly. Six fed lambs later – a mix between the bottle and hand-feedings them some sort of grainy mixture, which Adam left to Hendo – they were already on their way back towards the house. Not many words had passed between them since but Adam didn’t mind. Everything was calm in the morning, a pond without even a ripple. Even the smell of silage was rather fresh and crisp, and not heavy and dungy like it usually was. As Adam floated towards the door, lifting a boot up on the front step to get some leverage to remove it; thinking fondly back on all the smiles Hendo had returned this morning – there had been four, and each more glorious than the next – he felt Hendo’s hand slowly touch off his elbow.

No sooner had Adam begun to right himself, then he felt Hendo pressed up against him. Hendo brought himself right up close, his hands curling around the outsides of Adam’s arms, just below his shoulders. Adam felt the edge of the step start to press into his calves, and pressed back when he lifted his chin to face him. And then, when further kissing had seemed so certain, Hendo stopped as though he had suddenly forgotten what to do.

Adam didn’t even think about bridging the gap to their next kiss. He slid his hands into the space behind Hendo’s ears, and pulled him into one. He didn’t even consider whether he wanted it or not, he just went right on ahead and smushed up into Hendo’s mouth. Hendo didn’t really seem to mind though, because it only ended when sounds reached Adam’s ears of the steady trundle of an engine, and the tell-tale sound of splattering stones meaning that a car was slowly making its approach.

It was morning. The farm help was arriving. Hendo was _not_ meant to be kissing his cousin on the back porch when they did eventually turn the corner.

Hendo was slow to let go after Adam did. His eyes weren’t even open when he started to speak.

“I’m – “ and Adam already sensed an apology, so he cut him off.

“Anytime you like,” he tried to say, but the words caught in his throat, and came out super heavy. “Just. Do that. Anytime.” He managed to pull himself backwards, untangle his arms, because Hendo didn’t want to let go.

“The car!” He tried to say, as he laughed. He had to practically unhinge Hendo’s fingers one by one. He was red, definitely, super, beaming red under the intensity of all that _blue_ Hendo looked at him through. “Can’t you hear it? Listen!”

Hendo’s eyebrows had already begun to knit together when he stiffened. The sound had obviously just reached his ears. Adam was able to take a firm step back before the jeep came wheeling around the corner.

“I’ll see you later,” he called over the noise, grinning from ear to ear. Then he turned and disappeared inside the back door before anyone could spot him all glasses-and-beanie-less. He had to leaned up a little against the door when it shut. His knees knocked slightly. Hendo’s ears going from pink to red in his most recent memories did nothing to abate his smile.

He wondered if, for a while there, they had both forgotten a little bit that he was a prince. The weight of his duty was now quick to descend on his shoulders again.

His feelings about that brief sensation confused him: they weren’t very negative.


	5. Chapter 5

Adam had a very good day. In fact, he wasn’t entirely sure that he’d ever had a good day quite like it. His morning was spent making cakes. His afternoon was spent icing them. In between, he poured over cookbooks with Liz, where from a list of interesting recipes began to grow. By the end of the day, it was pinned to the fridge.

Adam enjoyed the rhythm of baking. He enjoyed following a set of tasks, like solving a problem, and he enjoyed the way it led to such a mouth-watering solution. He also enjoyed, especially, feeding a creation he could call his own to other people. Liz beamed at him when she tasted his caramel squares, and Brian looked astonished when he tried them at lunchtime. But pleasingly so.

He couldn’t quite measure Hendo’s reaction, however. This was mostly because when he brought the rest of the tray out to the lamb shed they had ended up being forgotten on an upturned box, and then had to be rescued before they were devoured by some hungry lambs instead. Hendo was laughing by the time it had been dealt with, supporting himself with the side of the shed and of course; whether he tried one or not really didn’t matter all that much to Adam by then.

After dinner, Hendo had retreated outside one last time to feed the lambs before bed, and Adam was stuck with the washing up. In this new world where Hendo told him where he’d be, Adam really didn’t mind offering. It meant that Liz and Brian went and sat in the living room and that, eventually, they went up to bed before Hendo had even come back.

It seemed like an unreasonably early hour to retire, but Adam nonetheless found his eyelids dropping as he sat in front of the fire. He even jolted a little awake when the door finally opened, signalling Hendo’s return.

Hendo did not immediately acknowledge Adam patiently sitting up waiting for him. Instead, his eyes did a quick sweep of the downstairs.

“Are they asleep?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

Adam nodded, feeling his features already pulling into a frown. This was answered by the simultaneous scratchings of claws on wood, and a fluffy, sheepdog head appeared by Hendo’s knee.

Hendo shut the door.

“Daisy’s not meant to be inside,” he offered, by way of explanation.

“Oh,” Adam said, startled. The dog’s paws pitter-pattered off the floor as it loped towards the couch, landing on the other end of it in one neap leap. Adam reached out a long, straight arm to pet its head. “Hi Daisy,” he said, because that’s what you said to dogs, he was sure; “who’s a good girl.”

“Daisy’s a boy,” Hendo said, with no humour whatsoever.

Adam let out a startled “oh” as Hendo followed the dog over. Adam was about to ask a follow-up question – because there had to be a story, after such an admission – but he refrained, because Hendo gave the space in between Adam and Daisy on the couch a confused look and Adam was worried that any queries into his pet-naming process might overload him a little.

Eventually, Hendo lowered himself down into the space. Daisy reacted faster than Adam, circling down into a ball with his head deftly placed on Hendo’s knee, all fluffy and big brown eyes. Adam wasn’t jealous.

Hendo reclined back into the chair, tilting his head back to rest on the back of the couch with a soft moan. Adam tried not to get too caught up in his tight jaw, his exposed throat, and quickly turned his attention back to the dog.

“Daisy,” he began slowly, and the dog’s ears lifted with the sound, “isn’t allowed on the couch?”

“Isn’t allowed _inside_.” Without looking, Hendo gave Daisy a soft pat. “He was my dog before I left.”

Adam didn’t feel like adding that the smell of wet dog was almost impossible to miss. It was mostly because Hendo was petting the dog so softly and, a bit like when he handled the lambs, Adam’s stomach tightened watching his hand stretch out with care and he didn’t even notice himself twisting closer.

Hendo’s head snapped up when Adam lifted his arm to drape it across the back of the couch. “Um,” he started, swallowing thickly. Adam stretched his fingers through the soft fuzz that stretched down the back of Hendo’s neck, slow enough to tickle his fingers. Hendo’s eyelids drooped. Adam leaned in and suddenly the air got much heavier.

* * *

 

“Umph.”

“ _Ow!_ ”

Adam jumped awake as something grabbed him by the waist. His scream was somewhat stifled by the angle which he’d buried his head into the pillow.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Hendo’s voice whimpered, making Adam twist around to see that the hard thing his elbow had connected with as he lashed out was actually Hendo’s sternum.

Adam had tensed up like a taught archery bow and yet something about the wobble in Hendo’s yelp of pain made him go completely limp.

“Sorry,” he croaked. “ _Sorry_!” His eyes had begun to adjust to the light some more, and he reached out through his bleary vision to rub Hendo’s arm. He was tense, so tense under Adam’s palm. “What were you _doing_?”

“You were gone,” Hendo said, dully. His wounding must have damped his enthusiasm somewhat. “I woke up and I didn’t know where you were.”

“You were asleep,” Adam mumbled, already feeling his lungs closing, as a lovely warm feeling pushed up through his chest. Hendo had been asleep, he’d fallen asleep on Adam, snoring at the same pace as the dog, and there really wasn’t the much room for the three of them on the couch to begin with. Adam had got up, covered Hendo with a blanket – he did owe him, after all – and was then asleep himself before his head had even hit the pillow. He had never done so much kissing in one day in his life, and it was _exhausting_.

“I didn’t know where you were,” Hendo mumbled, over and over. Slower and slower. His chest pressed up against Adams and it pulse slowed. There was something about it: Hendo’s hands clinging tightly to his face, their tangled legs, the disappearing sleepy, desperate edge to Hendo’s voice or maybe even that they were now sideways on a bed; that made Adam _want_ Hendo. It made him think about running his hands under the edges of Hendo’s shirt, how he could so easily press his mouth against Hendo’s neck and twist this into something sexual.

This thought was replaced by another, very different one: that this was fine the way it was. Whatever this thing meant – this thing where Hendo held him with just the right amount of pressure, slid the rest of himself onto the bed and sighed a lot of air, and where his lips were in a good proximity for kissing and Adam could now do that anytime he wanted – Adam was happy to leave it that way, suddenly.

“My kingdom for a double bed,” he murmured, kicking at Hendo’s foot. But softly.

* * *

 

“My kingdom for a camera,” Adam snorted. He was stretched up on his toes so he could see out the kitchen window. Outside the back Hendo, Brian, and several members of the farm help were trying and failing to redistribute a delivery of new fencing. This was because of - what appeared to be - a clash of opinions. Adam couldn’t quite discern what exactly the problem was because he couldn’t hear, only see, and the image of the four of them posturing in an almost circle while desperately gesturing in different directions was enough to make himself and Liz curl over giggling, with only the sink for support.

“Right,” Liz caught her breath. “They’ve been suffering for long enough. What they need out there,” she straightened her Cath Kidston apron, “is a _leader_.” And she disappeared out the back door.

* * *

 

“My kingdom for a second fork,” Adam mumbled, through mouthfuls of cake. He and Hendo sat at the kitchen table, finishing off the chocolate sponge Adam had made that morning.

Hendo lifted one of his hands holding the plate steady, manoeuvring it out from under Adam’s so he could suck buttercream icing from the edge of his palm. They sat, wedged together on the same seat, having discovered that Adam tucked nearly in under Hendo’s shoulder when they did.

“Pass the fork,” Hendo mumbled, and their arms rearranged themselves again – one over the other, over the other; one each to steady the plate when Hendo chased crumbs around with his fork. Adam’s elbow also fitted rather well into the crease of Hendo’s.

Everything fitted. Things were perfect. Adam leaned in to lick some stray icing from Hendo’s neck.

* * *

 

“My _kingdom_ ,” Adam panted, “for a sheep manual. What are they _doing_?”

Three of the lambs had gathered around his feet, twisting and turning their heads as they eyed up… his shoe laces.

Hendo, as usual, was no help at all. He was laughing, looking up from where he’d stretched to scratch Daisy behind the ear. “They’re sheep,” he said, “they don’t know what laces are.”

“Shoo!” Adam hissed, giving his foot a small shake when one of the lambs latched onto his lace and tugged. With their predictable little lamb screams, they all disappeared into the corner of the shed in less than a blink.

“A sheep manual isn’t going to help you,” Hendo grinned.

* * *

 

“My kingdom…” Adam murmured. It came out kind of lazily. Adam had only thought it, but it must have slipped out through the new looseness of his every muscle. There was something light about the air, despite the fact that he was lying on his back on the couch, his feet dangling from the angle of the arm rest, his head tilting back into Hendo’s lap. He was full to bursting: Hendo had surprised them all with a risotto (“you _cook_?”) and it had been followed up with a lemon drizzle cake. In another world, in his other life at this point: Adam might have cared once about macros and being an appropriate level of lean to fit nicely into an Armani suit, but he absolutely did not now.

When his eyes opened a crack, he saw the other side of the room, and Hendo’s parents in the opposite armchairs. Brian was frowning into a book; Liz was in the middle of knitting what could only have been a very long scarf in a mauve-y colour. Neither of them seemed particularly bothered at Adam’s current position, nor that Hendo’s fingers were curling softly through the hair at his crown.

“For what?” Hendo murmured, sleepily.

 _This._ Adam realised. _This feeling. How do I bottle it?_

Maybe he didn’t need to find a way to bottle it. Mostly he just needed Hendo to card through his hair like that with only the very ends of his fingers. He reached for Hendo’s hand on the couch beside him, lifted it to rest on his chest. He could hear the ticking noises of Liz’s knitting needles, nice and soft and rhythmic.

“Nothing,” he whispered, closing his eyes again.

* * *

 

Kissing in the lamb shed was becoming a little bit business as usual. The stretch of time spent on that particular activity had been increasing every day, but something in Adam one morning… snapped. They’d finished the first feeding of the day and, as Adam’s body clock was learning to determine, this meant some more, really quite nice, lip smushing; and then breakfast back at the house.

Adam had fallen into this routine with ease he didn’t think to reflect on. It was though, if he thought back, there wasn’t a time now when he hadn’t been kissing Hendo whenever he wanted. Yet this morning there had been a new addition to the lambing shed’s population: a new orphan. The last lamb of the season.

It was so much smaller than all the others. It had latched on to Hendo for the morning too, so all of his tasks had been completed single-handedly with a small, quivering fluffball tucked into his elbow. Adam had thought it endearing, but when it came to breakfast time, it seemed like Hendo didn’t really want to let go of the lamb either.

Adam was particularly fixated on Hendo’s arm as it curled the lamb closer for a brief moment – his bicep was almost the size of it.

And then:

“Put it down,” Adam demanded. He was suddenly very wheezy. Somewhere, his brain was floating away having detached itself from the inside of his head.

Hendo stiffened. Adam’s voice must have really weird. He did not put the lamb down.

“Why?” he asked.

 _I can’t believe,_ Adam thought, _I get off watching him cradle baby farm animals._

“Do it,” he whined. “Just…”

Hastily, Hendo deposited the lamb on the floor of the shed, where it stood quivering a little. Hendo had told him earlier that it was still young enough for its legs to be a little uncertain. For now, this didn’t bother Adam.

He took hold of the front of Hendo’s shirt with a tight fist and dragged him as he took quick steps backwards. When he felt the cool wall of the shed at his back he said “hold me” and stretched up on his toes. He didn’t expect Hendo to get it, so just in case he gripped onto his shoulders for balance as he lifted himself. Good, wide, bodyguard shoulders.

Just as well, because as predicted, Hendo didn’t get it. He seemed confused by this departure from normal kissing. His eyebrows rose high enough to meet his hairline.

 _I have to do_ everything _by myself_ , Adam thought desperately. He left one hand clinging around the top of Hendo’s shoulder and curled the other around his side, down his back. He pressed his palm down into the curve of Hendo’s lower spine, trying to push Hendo’s hips to him first.

He had had a wonderful image in his head a minute ago of being kissed passionately against the wall, and yet, there was so much hard work involved to get to that point; Adam was lucky enough to be so wound up in Hendo’s presence by now that it only slightly dampened his enthusiasm.

Hendo eventually got the message. It was something about the way their hips locked as Adam lifted up one of his knees to the outside of Hendo’s thigh. Suddenly, Hendo was alive as Adam was. Adam could taste it in the air between them, although it didn’t make him loosen his grip any less. In a sudden flurry, Adam felt the air pushed from his lungs as he was forced back against the bricks. It kind of came out in a sort of shrilly gasp, but he didn’t have time to mind. He had to suddenly grip around the back of Hendo’s head as he found himself finally suspended off the ground, one foot barely brushing the concrete as it dangled; digging a hole in the straw floor.

He kissed him now at a different angle, so he kissed him differently, too. He could angle his head to kiss so much deeper, he could lock his hands around the back of Hendo’s head, right deep into his hair.

An arm reached under his knee, lifted it right up past his waist. He yelped, biting down on Hendo’s lip, because his tendons just weren’t up for that kind of strain anymore. He tightened his grip, pushing with his other foot to lift himself up some more into Hendo’s solid. Hendo was grabbing at him too, Adam could feel his nails raking through his jumper. The fabric strained against his side. His hip was suddenly exposed to the cold.

Yet. Adam wanted Hendo to want him _more_. He wanted to make Hendo moan, twitch, curl around him – yes. These were the sensations he craved from Hendo, all of a sudden, just that morning.

He was obviously lying to himself. It was what he’d wanted all along.

Hendo was everywhere – in his nose, in his mouth, right up locked against him. It didn’t stifle him. Adam had forgotten that it could even feel like that.

He untangled his hand from where it meshed into the back of Hendo’s head and wormed it carefully down Hendo’s chest, gripping at this clothes to make him aware of its progress. He paused in the kiss just as he curled his hand around the front of Hendo’s crotch, opening his eyes, waiting to drink in Hendo’s reaction – maybe he’d moan, deep and guttural; or even bury himself further into Adam.

He did none of those things. As Adam pressed Hendo’s brow creased, one arching slightly higher than the other. His jaw went slack as if he had a question and couldn’t quite articulate it. Before Adam could ask the question: the shed door opened.

They fell away from the wall, still a mess of a knot. Adam had just righted himself when he realised he recognised who had stepped through the door: it was Alby, the recently married vet. A very shocked looking recently married vet.

The door slammed closed again, just as Hendo wrestled Adam’s hand away from his genitals. To his credit, Adam had been too suddenly distracted to remember that he’d left it there.

“Hendo!” Alby gasped. He clutched at his face so hard that his fingers left little indents in his cheeks. Startled, Daisy leapt to his feet and began to bark. Alby looked to Adam, then Hendo, then back again. “ _Hendo_ , he’s – “

“He’s _not_ – “ Hendo said it like a snarl, shouting over the very loud _woofs_ that echoed around the room. Adam still wasn’t together enough to feel dread about his identity being uncovered, and watched it all like a spectator in the stands. “ _Alby_ , he’s – “

“ – your _cousin_.” Alby let it out in a squeak, somehow the loudest sound of all.

A surprised silence fell around the room. Hendo froze. Adam, next to him, felt his body pulsing. Embarrassment? The prospect of solving this conundrum in the next ten seconds? Even Daisy went quiet, looking back at Hendo as if his next move would be an indication on whether to keep barking or not.

Adam _laughed_. One second he was in stony silence like the rest of them, the next he was doubled over with the agony and force of it – it was _funny_ : Alby’s horror and Hendo’s confusion and the fact that even the _dog_ recognised it. Alby thought he had stumbled on incest, and it suddenly made the reality of it _easier_.

“Hendo,” Alby was still stammering, alarmed at Adam’s convulsions, “we know you’re lonely. But,” his voice retreated to a whimper, “your _cousin_?”

It was time to stop but Adam couldn’t. He curled backwards to land on the floor with a thump, still wheezing, still _on fire_ where Hendo had been touching him. Daisy let out a high-pitched whine. Hendo’s jaw hung slack, rather like he’d been slapped.

“You’re back,” he finally said. “From your honeymoon. I thought it was…”

“… a week?” Alby was distraught. “Of course I’m back!”

It was only when Adam landed on the floor that Alby actually seemed to look at him.

“Hey,” he said, frowning, “you look really familiar without those glasses.”

“Huh,” Adam coughed, physically holding the laughter in his chest by folding his arms around it.

“Prince Adam!” Alby’s eyes widened. “You _really_ look like him. You know, I’d believe it, but I just saw that he’s on his yacht in the Bahamas.”

 _I wish_ , Adam thought. Then he remembered Hendo, and retracted it. In reality, if we was on his yacht, Hendo would be in the vicinity but just not quite the way Adam had come to expect. Or want, even. He used both of his hands to push himself to his feet, and then Hendo’s nearby elbow to steady himself.

Alberto’s eyes were only growing wider. “It…” he began. “It _is._ You _are_. Aren’t you?”

Adam could only laugh, but it was mostly at the utter horror on Hendo’s face. It didn’t seem to matter that the squeaky vet knew, although he knew it meant a great deal to Hendo.

“ _Hendo_ ,” Alby gasped. “He’s – “

“ _No_ ,” Hendo yelped. He tugged his elbow free from Adam’s hand. Daisy started to bark, padding back and forth across the space in between them and Alby, his long feathery tail swish-swishing with delight. Helping nothing at all.

“ _– not_ your cousin.” Alby raised his hands to clutch at his face. “I’m so relieved!”

The situation was getting more ridiculous by the second and Adam suddenly thought of a way to contribute. He took a hold of Hendo’s hand instead, and tried to ignore how his look of horror upped several notches as a reaction.

“Alby,” Adam said sternly. Alby clutched his cheeks a little more firmly, Adam recognised, because he’d been addressed by name by a Famous. “There’s a reason I’m pretending to be in the Bahamas. This is a _secret_.” Without giving Hendo a chance to come to his senses, he reached up on his toes and turned Hendo’s face to him with his palm. They kissed, Hendo’s mouth firm and still sweet.

Alby squealed. “You’re in love,” he half-sobbed.

The dog was still barking. Adam laid his head against Hendo’s neck, his sharp clavicle dug into Adam’s cheek even through his clothes. Adam took a long breath – he hadn’t meant to get to caught up in that moment, but now he remembered just how much he wanted Hendo. How much his _body_ wanted Hendo. Really badly.

“This has to be a secret, Alby,” he wheezed. He didn’t dare meet Hendo’s eyes – he had a terrible feeling Hendo looked almost as surprised as Alberto did. “You know, if anyone finds out…”

Adam wasn’t actually sure what would happen, theoretically, if he ever eloped to a remote mountain. It didn’t matter though.

“Of course!” Alberto nodded seriously. He had practically left intents where he’d clutched at his cheeks. “No one will ever know. _Never_ – I can’t believe – Hendo, you’re in _love_.”

Adam allowed himself to look. Hendo did not look in love. He looked belligerent.

“Daisy!” Alberto feel to his knees, and the dog came over to him at a canter. “Are you as happy as I am about this?” Daisy hit him at full speed, all wriggling and wagging tail. “Of course, you are, you’re a wonderful dog. Did you miss me on my honeymoon?” He began to coo at the dog

“What have you _done_?” Hendo hissed. He was _furious_ , pulling his hand out of Adam’s. And in his fury, his cheekbones snapped out from his face. His eyes blazed. His jaw set square.

Adam was turned on like he’d never been turned on before.

“Come,” he croaked. He took hold of the inside of Hendo’s elbow this time, which was much better for grip than his hand. Adam’s palms were slippery and Hendo’s shirt soaked it all up. “ _Come_.”

Hendo spluttered as Adam jerked him away, smiling politely (he appeared to have not lost his touch with those habits, despite the lack of practise) and out towards the house. He was sure Hendo was digging his heels into the gravel as he was dragged – once outside the lamb shed he did seem to get a lot heavier to pull.

“Stop being – “ Adam hissed but didn’t finish his sentence, quite out of breath by the time he’d tripped up the back steps, damp the whole way down his spine.

“Why did you _tell_?” Adam had never seen him this mad. “Alberto Moreno has the biggest _mouth_ in the whole _county_.” Hendo buried his face in his hands and slumped back against the door when it closed.

“It’s _fine_ ,” Adam promised. “Everyone loves a secret love story. He won’t tell.”

“My _job_ ,” Hendo wailed, obviously not listening. “If it gets out that you’re here, I’m fired, I’ll never be hired _anywhere_ else.”

“ _Nah,”_ Adam said lightly, and a bit sarcastically. Hendo was pressing his palms into his eye sockets with alarming force, and Adam was trying to wrestle his arms away, lest he do permanent damage. “We can be in love, right? What’s wrong with it?”

That made Hendo let go. “I want to live in the kind of world you think we live in,” he murmured. Adam took the opportunity to wedge himself up against Hendo again. He particularly liked the way he could feel the ends of Hendo’s groan reverberating through his neck when he pressed his lips against it. Sure, it wasn’t the kind of groaning Adam wanted him to make – namely, it was out of frustration with him and not arousal – but he’d take it.

“We have to go back out there,” Hendo was still talking despite Adam’s neck kiss, and its intended effect; “we have to go back out and tell Alby you were joking.”

Adam dragged his mouth slowly up towards Hendo’s ear. “It duzznmatter.” He rubbed his hands now slowly up and down his sides. He tried to put into words that if he had to elope to with anyone at all, Hendo was probably the closest thing to being it – but it was more of a weird swilling sensation in his stomach than something he could actually put into words.

Hendo made to continue but Adam told him to shut up, a little meanly and without really intending to. Hendo may have been startled, but Adam may also have just reached a particularly soft patch behind his ear. He hadn’t been able to think, he was on _fire_ : it had been a while, hadn’t it? Hendo was careful with him, Hendo made him happy – it had to make it all the better for _being_ with him. In the last few minutes he’d allowed himself to think what the sex he’d had before would have been like if it had been with someone he cared for.

“Touch me,” he mumbled against Hendo’s skin, gripped by a wave of sudden heat – from which of them exactly, he couldn’t tell. The door rattled as Hendo curved back into it. Adam took the bottom half of Hendo’s shirt in great fists and hoisted it up towards his shoulders, sliding his hands underneath to press them against his skin. Hendo was warm, and tensed with Adam’s touch: palming into the skin at his hips where the bone angled sharp into his hands.

When Hendo kissed him – twisting his head to nudge Adam away from his neck and in against his mouth – Adam barely felt himself buck against him, merely a sharp jerk from his hips. And then he tried it again, slower, urged by the sloppiness of their kissing, how Hendo’s breath panted hot against his lips, how his hands curled around the lowest point of his back and his fingers pressed into the bottom of the crease of Adam’s spine.

Adam _may_ have panicked. He was sure, so sure that another minute of this and he was going to finish in the most complete and embarrassing way possible, and they would both still be standing up and fully clothed. But he could barely think, he wasn’t even sure his lungs were registering full breaths.

The door rattled again as Adam let go; his grateful, trembling knees sank to the floor. He unstuck his hands from Hendo’s skin – Hendo’s body was heaving great waves of breath and heat – and reached for the zip of Hendo’s hideous farmer jeans, for their button, scrabbled at the elastic lip of his boxers. He had already taken Hendo in his mouth as far back as he would go, when he found himself sitting back on his hands on the kitchen floor.

In an instant, red hot desire turned into red hot shame. A yelp echoed in his ears, but he was sure he hadn’t made it. He licked his lips and tried to connect the facts, turning to follow Hendo stomping past him while he tucked himself back into his trousers.

Hendo reached one of the chairs at the kitchen table and melted into it.

“What,” he hissed into his hands, “the _hell_.”

This shame, to Adam, tasted a lot like bile.

“Sorry,” he said, in his smallest voice. He felt practically Lilliputian from here on the floor. After a few more seconds staring, miserable and confused, at his shoes he tried: “you didn’t like it?”

Hendo grunted.

At least, Adam thought with an overpowering wave of misery; he was still acknowledging Adam’s existence.

Adam frowned at his shoes now. But that’s how it always went? It was a certain part of his routine. _No one_ said no to a blow job. Right? And Adam had been even kind of looking forward to getting on his knees this time, if that were remotely possible.

“I…” he began. He thought around it. “You didn’t _want_ it?” He turned and pushed himself up with his hands. Hendo was bent over the table, the long line of his neck was very, _very_ red.

He remembered, with sudden clarity, that not so long ago he’d had to put up with a Hendo who sneered at his predilection for casual sex.

“I’m sorry,” he tried again, not sure if it would help. “I just… no one else has had a problem. With that.”

Before he finished his sentence, something visibly shrunk across Hendo’s back. As it tightened, maybe. He didn’t look up.

Adam was beginning to sweat at the prospect of ruining this whole, wonderful thing when he’d barely lived enough of it. He thought. He thought _really hard_. He went the whole way back to when someone had first gone down on him, without warning, and it clicked.

“It’s because you’ve never had that before,” he realised slowly. “Right?”

It took several seconds, but Hendo lifted himself up from the table with that seemed to be great difficulty, starting with where his lower back arched. He still didn’t manage to reach full height before he made an attempt to turn around. His eyes were down. Adam had never seen him look this distressed.

“I’m sorry,” Adam whispered. His voice seemed to now be stuck three decibels below its normal range. “That was really stupid of me. I should have… asked first or something. I just _thought_.” And then he forced himself to shut up before he made this a whole lot worse for himself. He made to move past Hendo, to sit in the closest chair at the table, but an arm reached out and grabbed his wrist to hold him in place.

“I was just going to sit down,” he said, as the hand fell away. “I’m sorry.”

Boosted by Hendo’s apparent wish for him to stick around besides being the worst kind of douchebag, he curled his hands around the back of his chair.

“I just thought,” he offered weakly, “that’s how it goes. Is all.”

A rumbling noise came deep from the bottom of Hendo’s throat. “With everyone else?”

Adam paused. He ran the edge of his knuckle down the side of Hendo’s neck, tracing his fascination with the long curve of the edge of his shorn hair.

“This is new to me, too,” he said quietly. “Although it doesn’t make what I did less stupid.” He reached the base of Hendo’s neck, and rubbed it with his thumb now. “We don’t have to do that until you want to.” He swallowed. “You don’t have to want to.”

There was a heavy silence.

“The others?” Hendo said, weakly.

“It’s not like that.”

“Isn’t it?”

Adam tried for several seconds, to find the words to articulate as much as possible how this just wasn’t like all the _others_. Everything else up to now hadn’t been quite like this: never as much space-sharing, no cake-sharing, no bed-sharing, not nearly quite consistently as much tongue-sharing. In general, whatever being with Hendo meant, it was so fundamentally different to all his other experiences because it felt like an experience they _shared_ , and not, as it usually was, something Adam would try and take as much out of as possible before he disappeared into the morning.

He slid his hands over the tops of Hendo’s shoulders, rolled his back so he could stretch down and wrap his arms around the front of Hendo’s torso and hold him.

“No,” he said, “it isn’t.” He buried his head into the crease between Hendo’s neck and his shoulder, trying to drink as much of him in as he could when he breathed.

* * *

 

The air hung weirdly around them for the rest of the day. Hot shame flared in Adam’s stomach every time he realised that it was all of his making. As afternoon made way to evening, another uncomfortable thought had started to materialise. That Hendo really _wasn’t_ like everyone else he’d been with.

It wasn’t something he’d really thought all that much about, despite the circumstances. But it soon became abundantly clear to Adam that he was, all of a sudden, _way_ in over his head.

He’d been attracted to people before. Definitely. However, _before_ he hadn’t made a habit of tracing down the curves of the bridge of their nose with his fingertip. Equally, he had never previously found it soothing to rub his cheek off the edge of someone’s stratchy jaw. Nor had he ever had an eagerness to learn someone’s moods through their eyes; he had not ever previously known a time when he’d dedicated actual brainpower to attempting to combine that with how someone’s forehead creased for a better reading. Previously – in another life, at this point – he had been so sure that Hendo only had one mood, and that it primarily stemmed from his distaste for Adam’s lifestyle. He was so wrong.

He was a little surprised when Hendo climbed into the bed behind him as though Adam hadn’t recently severely embarrassed himself. It was as though nothing had happened, as though Adam hadn’t tip-toed around him all day while trying to quell his urge to be right up next to him.

His head fell slowly into place on the pillow behind Adam. It was always close enough so Adam could feel warmth on his neck when Hendo’s breath started to slow.

He felt a kick of disgrace again. He should have apologised here, one more time. Never go to bed angry, wasn’t that a thing? But then that would mean that this would have to be a _thing_. It would also mean that they would have to have fought, and Adam wasn’t entirely sure if they had _officially._

He barely slept. His skin crawled while he did lie awake, all of his thoughts punctured by Hendo’s snores.

 _Is this it_? He wondered in distress, again and again, _is this me falling for him?_

 _But he’s my bodyguard and he doesn’t like_ anything _._

Ooof. His brain suddenly had license to wander elsewhere: to his parents, whom he had heard little of, to the fact that someone had tried to kill him, to duty, to rules and to alcohol that made it all go away.

It surprised him, each time, how fast he could now ground himself. It was getting easier to pull himself out of that panicked chaos in his head and count Hendo’s breaths, brought to his attention by the weight of the arm curled tight around his middle. A constant. In the dim light, Adam could see how Hendo’s fingers overlapped his.

He slept.

* * *

 

Hendo wasn’t with him when he woke up. It was unusual and slightly disorientating. Adam had started to become rather fond of their habits: those few seconds where they came to in the morning, where they’d stretch into each other, reach for each other. Half-conscious Hendo had a thing about neck nuzzles that had the great effect of jolting Adam right awake.

He pushed himself up onto his hands. He had never brought his watch with him on a night out, lest he fail to recover it; never mind the tell-tale inscription, and since he hadn’t had an opportunity to recover it before he went into hiding Adam mostly had no choice but to tell the time now by the light. It was a sketchy system at best, but he could register that it was still too early to be up.

He wondered, with a sharp pinch of dread, if Hendo had woken up in the middle of the night and, put off by Adam’s unwanted advance, had decided that the couch with Daisy was a better option. Hendo never woke up in the middle of the night, so it _must_ have been bad. Also, Adam was a terrible sleeper, so Hendo had intentionally extracted himself from their cuddle without waking him up.

He could hear sounds downstairs as he padded gingerly down the hallway, trying his best to rub his face awake. Soft sounds, like Hendo was trying really hard to be quiet. There was even a _shush_ ing noise as he made his way down the twisting stairs.

Hendo had made the noise at the dog, who was waiting for Adam at the bottom of the stairs and was much perkier than anyone or anything should have been allowed. Daisy’s mouth hung open, a bark had probably been cut off by Hendo’s order, so now his tongue lolled instead. Adam couldn’t help but grin a bit, and at the bottom of the stairs, enveloped Daisy in a cuddle when he fell to his knees. Daisy always seemed to smell overwhelmingly of wet dog, which did make sense, but smelled a little better after spending the night indoors.

Hendo was moving around the kitchen, as though he hadn’t noticed Adam’s arrival downstairs. Adam straightened: Hendo was stuffing a bag that lay open on its back beside the sink, flanked by a large thermos and a water bottle.

Adam had come down to apologise, but was immediately confused.

“Hey,” he said, the _what’s going on?_ Catching in his throat.

Hendo turned his head. The edges of his lips lifted when he saw Adam, followed by his chin – drawing high. His shoulders dropped, and Adam could tell – even though he already knew well enough by now – that his eyes were blue from all the way across the room.

“I’m sorry,” Adam blurted out now, feeling thoroughly undeserving of such a view. “About yesterday. You,” he dipped his head, “ _know_.”

Hendo shrugged, although he did colour a little at the edges of his cheeks. “You said,” he muttered, a little bluntly.

Adam shifted from foot to foot, still feeling squirmy. “I am,” he insisted. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Something cold pressed into his hand and it was Daisy, snuffling for treats. Adam rubbed his drool off on his trousers. “What are you doing anyway?”

“Packing,” Hendo said simply.

“No shit,” Adam replied, sliding into a kitchen chair. Daisy had obviously latched on to him as his only hope for breakfast, as he followed and dropped his head in Adam’s lap. “For what?”

“Hiking.” Hendo righted the backpack and zipped it closed.

“Oh,” Adam said. This, he had not expected.

“I was going to let you sleep a bit longer,” Hendo said. “I’d like to go as soon as it’s bright enough.” He was wearing the worn clothes Adam had come to recognise as pyjamas on him. He looked very warm and snuggly, and Adam was very tempted to pull him with him back up the stairs by his holey t-shirt.

“I see,” Adam said, still a little too incredulous to fully comprehend. Then, with bed snuggles still on the brain, he asked: “why?”

Hendo blinked at him. “Because,” he said, and left it at that.

Adam paused, thinking.

“What about the lambs?” he asked. It felt like an immediately obvious question. Hendo was devoted to the lambs.

“Alberto said he could take over today. Dad also said we could bring Daisy, and the weather is meant to be reasonable so – “ he paused, lifting the Weetabix box from the cereal cupboard. “Do you like hiking?” he asked, looking as though the thought had literally just occurred to him that Adam mightn’t.

 _He planned this_ , Adam thought. His eyes fell on the backpack, the thermos. _If he wanted to go hiking so badly, he didn’t have to bring me. It’s so we can spend time together. He wants to be with me. That it, isn’t it?_

“I love hiking _,”_ he lied.


	6. Chapter 6

Despite Hendo’s claim that the weather would be reasonable, they set off later wrapped up to their ears. It was all well and good – Adam was walking a little lighter, still touched that this had been Hendo’s idea – until they left the sheltered bowl in the mountainside where the house was situated.

That was when the wind began.

They reached the first rocky peak behind the house, Adam barely able to stand upright as they crossed it, buffed by the gale. To his dismay, from this vantage point – the highest Adam could see from the house – there were only _more peaks_.

He remembered why he hated hiking.

Hendo, however, relished in it. He faced the wind without a single wrinkle on his face, leaned into the current with a wide chest. When Adam eventually started to fall back, Hendo kept the pace with him. Daisy gave up dancing in between their legs and loped ahead. This was a familiar track, Hendo explained. They’d done it before, usually it was himself and Daisy. He wanted to show it to Adam.

This revelation spurred Adam on, if only for a few metres.

They followed the narrow spine of one of the hills, the long grass lapping against the slope in the wind like a fine coat of fur. A round, silvery pool of water was framed in the bottom of the valley – coloured, no doubt, by the teal colour of the sky that was dotted with round blots of cloud: with no resemblance whatsoever to the sheep Adam had come to know.

He did feel though, as if he and sheep had come to an understanding. They weren’t likely to eat him, he’d found out, and they were very good at avoiding each other. Especially when Adam had Hendo to hide behind.

Hendo seemed to follow a trail that existed only in his head, but at the same time Adam didn’t think for one second that he didn’t know where he was going. It would be very unlike Hendo to not plan something like this to the metre. Yet, there was no distinct path in the grass, and Adam was often left wheezing as he scrambled over rocks, his gloves were soaked and his hands were freezing. Soon, he found himself becoming fixated on the contents of Hendo’s backpack.

Food. There had to be food in it. Adam’s stomach complained angrily, and his fingers longed for heat from the contents of the thermos.

“Lunch time?” he asked. He waited for Hendo to lift himself up the rock face in front of them, with envious ease. Adam had slightly more trouble following: he worked out, sure, but his shoulders locked as he attempted to hoist his body, too recently stuffed with too much cake, up the rock; and his knees scratched off the face of it as he tried to find footing. Hendo’s hand appeared at his ear and Adam didn’t hesitate to grab it, scrambling up the rest of the face and promptly collapsing when he reached the top.

Fortunately, it was in to Hendo, and Hendo was laughing, and it was truly _irresistible_.

They only surfaced when Daisy began to woof, at first a whole hemisphere away. Adam managed to detach himself to scowl at the dog skipping around them in loops, his tail swishing. Somehow, Daisy had figured that Hendo and Adam in frantic lip-lock was some sort of game.

Hendo’s laughter was still dying a little as he pushed off Adam and for a short minute, their hands stayed clasped and Adam hoped, suddenly more than he’d hoped for anything, that they’d stay that way - an extension of that miracle kiss that seemed to have wiped a thick layer of yesterday's anxiety away. This ridiculous trek would be so much better if he could hold Hendo’s hand while he listened to him rattle on about shrubbery. It was short-lived, because Hendo pulled his hand free and continued up the slope, leaving Adam to collect himself through the remainder of how forcefully he’d wanted it.

Distracted by this struggle, it took him several more minutes before he realised that Hendo hadn’t answered his question about lunch.

They eventually came to a stop just under the summit of one of the spindly peaks. In the sheltered corner of the mountain a lip of rock jutted out from the edge of the slope. They could sit on the edge and let their legs dangle, the drop not even half a foot to more of the silky grass below. The view, Adam thought, as he tried to right his hair where it had been pummelled by the wind; was on the high end of spectacular. _And_ he had been already spoiled for long enough now with the view of the valley from Hendo’s window and all.

It was so much better in 3-D – grey edges of rock jutting through the green carpet as far as the eye could see. On some level, this couldn’t be real. It was too perfect, too like a film set. He took a deep breath. The air smelled of nothing at all, it seemed to widen the stretch of his lungs.

“It’s nice,” Hendo said quietly, “isn’t it.”

Adam watched him shift closer and twist his bag around onto his lap. He watched, even more intently, as Hendo lifted what could only be foil-wrapped sandwiches from inside.

“You’re worse than the dog,” he grinned, as Adam licked his lip, “you only think with your stomach.”

“I could give a smart answer to that,” Adam retorted, “about other places I think with. But I’m not gonna.” He gave Hendo a small nudge with the edge of his shoulder, and began to unwrap. He felt his inner temperature rising. It felt inappropriate to make dick jokes around Hendo, somehow, when this was all still so tender and new. They seemed to have taken several steps back in whatever this was, since yesterday.

He peeled up the top layer of sliced pan. “Is that… cream cheese?” He blinked. “ _Herbed_ cream cheese? And tomatoes? How,” he kicked him now with his dangling feet, “did you _know_.”

Hendo shrugged, and bit into his sandwich to avoid answering.

 _He made me my favourite sandwiches._ Adam felt a lot warmer. They weren’t intentionally his favourite sandwiches, it wasn’t like he’d ever _asked_ for them; they just always seemed to be abundant whenever there was an event at the palace with a spread of some kind. People weren’t apparently all that fond of herby cream cheese and tomato sandwiches, and no one had told the caterer yet.

“It’s,” Hendo said, when he’d stopped chewing, and it looked like Adam wasn’t going to eat until he answered, “my job to watch you.”

Had he watched Adam sneak into the kitchen of the middle of the night to lavishly spread cream cheese and sneak cherry tomatoes from the fridge?

Hendo’s sandwich, in the present, was a boring ham and cheddar by the looks of things.

“You didn’t feel the urge for some cream cheese?” Adam asked, finally taking a bite into heaven.

“There wasn’t a lot of it,” Hendo said, seemingly satisfied now to watch him eat, “in town. I gave you most of it.”

He didn’t look prepared for Adam’s despair. “What?” he asked. “It’s a _sandwich_.”

“You gave up cream cheese for me,” Adam said, awed. It was truly monumental. There was nothing on _earth_ better than cream cheese.

Hendo was still alarmed. “I can get it again. I’ve seen you eat every sandwich at some events, I didn’t want to deprive you of it.”

Adam suddenly wanted to fling the sodding sandwich away and throw himself around Hendo, so intense was the burst of emotion in his chest.

“ _What_?” Hendo asked again, although he was reflecting Adam’s smile back at him.

“Would you like some?” Adam asked. He held out half of his sandwich.

Hendo hesitated. “I’m fine,” he said. “These are fine.”

“You’re _lying,”_ Adam retorted. He placed it with the remainder of Hendo’s lunch, the foil wrapping balanced on his lap.

“ _Adam_.”

“You know what my dad always says,” Adam started, then paused as he chewed. Hendo raised an eyebrow. “Eat up,” Adam was sure his teeth were coated with a fine layer of cream cheese, but he bared them anyway, “and shut up.”

They both snorted, and simultaneously tried to bury it into their bread. Hendo spat bits of it as he giggled. Adam had never seen anything more endearing.

It was true, Adam thought, as they shared large slabs of brownie between them (Adam’s latest speciality, that he’d taken the liberty of adding to the pack straight from the freezer) that his Dad did have rather good dinner table jokes. It was well honed, as most of the politics he was involved in took place over large meals. And Adam missed him, he thought with a twinge. As free as he felt up here surrounded by all this air and with Hendo beside him –  solid, balancing it all, like a crutch – Adam still thought of home, as badly as he wished that he could stay here forever.

He missed his parents with fresh malice. It had been a week, and yet he could no longer content himself with making cake all day. He had a duty, a purpose, and it got weirder the longer he didn’t feel like he was fulfilling it. This would never be his world.

“I don’t want to be king,” he said suddenly.

He expected the statement to echo off the mountain around them, to get louder and louder until it filled the silence. But it dissipated in the air, as though he had merely remarked about the weather.

Hendo’s chewing on his brownie slowed.

Adam swallowed. “I like this life,” he said. “I wish I’d been born into it, if I’m honest. I wish _we_ …” he struggled with the rest of the phrase. _I wish you’d been in my life like this sooner._

He’d been preparing to be a king for his whole life, it was all he knew, it was what felt right. But there was a niggle now, a big question.

He knew it was stupid, wistful thinking. The only reason he wanted a drama-free like was because he had been born into a life full of drama.

“You can handle it,” Hendo said, when Adam tried this out loud. “Drama,” he added.

Hendo spoke frankly and Adam welcomed it. This wasn’t real if they couldn’t talk about who Adam was away from all of this.

“I don’t think I can,” Adam said. “I think I just try and match it. Which doesn’t count. Like, _Dad…_ you know, he’s got the charisma to charm a room.”

“He also has a crown.”

“You know what I mean.”

“But the crown does help.” Hendo refused to wither under his gaze. “Adam. It’s not like you don’t…” he swallowed, as if suddenly remembering his place, and Adam wished he wouldn’t.

“Say it.” Adam butted him with his shoulder. “Go on.”

Hendo clearly his throat thickly. “It’s not like you avoid dramatic company,” he finished dully.

Studge. People always meant Studge when they said this. For some reason, the idea seemed to have spread that he was behind Adam’s late-night excursions and, because of this, on a reflex Adam would always defend him to the death.

“Daniel Sturridge,” he said coldly, “is the best person I know.”

Hendo stared ahead in silence.

“You know why he was made an Earl?” Hendo didn’t know. He couldn’t know, he only arrived after it all happened. “He saved my life.”

He could practically see Hendo’s ear’s sharpening. When his neck clicked around, his eyes had spread – his pupils had dilated right down to non-existent flecks.

“It was when we were on civic duty with the army,” Adam began to explain, “we were always best mates, but they stationed me at home, you know. It was a better image for starters, the goody-goody royal spawn patrolling the streets… rescuing cats from trees, helping farmers with the harvest. God,” he rubbed his face with his hand, “my life was just one massive PR stunt. Anyway,” he cleared his throat. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d told this story himself.

“We were out west. Remember those floods, what? Four years ago? We went to build sand barriers. This kid, he was only up to my knees, and his cat was stuck out in the middle of the water and I didn’t even think – I went out for it. God, it – “he tugged slightly at his hair, humiliation churning his guts, “– I didn’t even think. Single-handedly the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, I went out without a lifeline and everything. Needless to say, it was deeper than I thought, and the current was stronger than I thought.”

He could feel the water closing in over his nose, again, like it was yesterday. How the current weighed on his chest with the force of a bowling ball. A tight grip on his arm – but this time it was only Hendo, who had reached into Adam’s lap and clasped his hand around Adam’s limp wrist.

“Well, I made it, obviously,” Adam pointed out, to the strength of Hendo’s grasp, and the ivory white of his clenched knuckles. “Because of Studge. He saw it happen, cool as you like: tethered himself to a tree, came out for me _and_ the kid’s cat.” Adam snorted. “They wanted to keep my stupidity on the DL, but Studge got an Earldom. He didn’t want it. I made him take it.”

He turned Hendo’s hand around in his lap and with the edge of his thumb nail, traced down the creases of his palm. The residual feeling of panic as he coughed the last of the water out of his lungs seemed so far away when he did.

“I see,” Hendo murmured. He curled his fingers tentatively around Adam’s, then gently squeezed.

“It’s why,” Adam said, “I had to quit. I missed it for a while. But I had Studge, and clubbing you know – it was fun for a really long time.”

Hendo squeezed some more. “It’s not,” he struggled with the words like they were physically painful to say, “the _clubbing_.”

“It’s all that sex?” Adam said blithely, and felt immediately bad when the cold current ran through Hendo’s body beside him. He’d forgotten. He’d completely forgotten how much Hendo despised, with clear venom, the aftermath of every single one of Adam’s encounters.

Hendo looked like he was going to be sick, but instead of vomit when he opened his mouth, he said: “you shouldn’t.”

There was a cold silence. _You don’t get to tell me what to do_ , Adam thought, just as he also thought, _he’s probably right_.

He shifted suddenly closer. Like a well-choreographed dance move by now, Hendo lifted his hand from Adam’s lap and smoothed it around his back, lifting his shoulder so Adam could fit under it. Adam thought about reaching for Hendo’s other hand, but he curled his fingers around the outside of Hendo’s neck, cradled it close to his cheek when he nestled his face against it.

“I didn’t have this,” he whispered. The heel of Hendo’s hand rubbed into his back, just against the outside of his spine. He took a deep breath. “I’ve never had this.”

Hendo swallowed. Adam felt the pulse of his neck against his throat. He exhaled, and Adam allowed himself to fit better into the space.

“Afghanistan,” Hendo said quietly. He took a long moment, but Adam didn’t interrupt. “I came home from Afghanistan because I had some shrapnel buried in my shoulder. An ambush, at a checkpoint.”

His hand moved up and down Adam’s back now as though he’d forgotten it was moving, keeping its own gentle rhythm.

Adam waited for more of the story, but he had a feeling it wouldn’t come. Hendo didn’t have a penchant for storytelling as it was, and he could tell from the sharpness of his words that it wasn’t one he liked recounting.

“I didn’t want to go back,” he said, as if it was a conclusion. “I’d seen enough.” A beat. “There’s still some in there. Shrapnel.”

More silence as Adam digested the words.

“How did you get work in security?” Adam asked. “If you were injured.”

“The shoulder works, I’m not fit for work on the field though. And sometimes,” his voice dropped, “it still hurts.”

Adam let silence fully fall before he asked: “this shoulder?” about the one his head rested on.

Hendo nodded.

“Does it hurt now?” At the query, he rubbed one hand along the edge of Hendo’s closet clavicle.

“It was killing me at the wedding,” Hendo murmured slowly. “Alby’s wedding. But. Not really since.”

Adam breathed deep, clutched him close as he thought of his pain.

“Me too,” Hendo said slowly, against his ear. “You know. Having this before.”

“You haven’t?”

“No,” Hendo said quickly. “A little more obviously than you, I think.”

Adam decided that he’d tell him later about the pure panic he’d felt, thinking about Hendo cuddling other people, that he still held a candle for his childhood best friend. He was just so glad, right then, that he had him at all.

Adam felt Hendo’s chin dip against his forehead, and lifted his head to meet him. They kissed until Adam’s jaw cramped, hid away here together in the sheltered side of the mountain.

* * *

 

“You’ve been up here before often,” Adam said, “haven’t you?”

They’d begun their descent, if only because Hendo had insisted they get home before it even hinted at getting dark.

 _Home,_ Adam thought, with a painful swill in his stomach. And yet, it undeniably was one now.

“Daisy and I found it last summer,” Hendo replied, offering his arm for Adam to lean into as he hopped down a rock.

“It’s pretty perfect,” Adam said. “Well, at the top anyway.” The descent, he was discovering was as, if not more, complicated than the ascent. It required a lot of sliding on his arse. None of this for Hendo though, who had the footing of a mountain goat.

“Yes,” Hendo said easily. His smile was permanent – whether it was because he found Adam’s method of climbing back down the mountain hilarious (Adam would also find it hilarious, if the back of his pants weren’t so soggy from it), or because of this new way he seemed to hold himself: the result of a day of fresh air, Adam decided. He, too, felt a little light around the brain. He wasn’t sure he could attribute it totally to altitude sickness. “Perfect.”

Eventually, the ground sloped less, the grass became more. Adam could keep up with Hendo now a bit better, although he did have to rush a bit to match his steps. That was, until he came to a sudden stop; alerted by Daisy’s barking. In their path: a flock of large, lumbering mounds the size of minivans, that _moved._

“What’s _that_.” His reflexes sprang to attention, and he practically pulled Hendo backwards as he grabbed his arm, ducking behind his bulk.

“It’s,” Hendo swallowed back what might have been a cackle, “a cow?”

“It’s not,” Adam insisted. “That is _clearly_ a yeti.”

Hendo had paused the conversation to summon Daisy to heel after the cow – the _yeti_ – had taken a nervous step backwards. It had the size and stature of a yeti: was a vibrant, auburn red with long shaggy hair that covered the space where it’s eyes should be.

“I’m contracted to die for you,” Hendo joked, and it did come out as one. “I’m telling you the cows are fine. You have nothing to worry about.” He pulled his arm gently, as if to drag Adam along.

“One of them has horns,” Adam whispered, horrified, “for _stabbing_.” And he had thought the sheep were the largest danger presented by the Lake District.

“You are,” Hendo said, “a coward.” Then, he shifted his arm, and pulled Adam along by the hand instead. Adam’s palm moistened, and Hendo shifted his fingers to hold on to it better. “Come on.”

This time, he didn’t let go.

Their path curved down towards the house, and their legs fell into a slow step, slow enough to let an increasingly fatigued Daisy trundle down the hill in front of them.

“He had a good day,” Hendo said, absently. “Daisy.”

Their connected arms swung slightly as they came to a stop.

“And you?” Adam asked. He moved closer, their elbows pressing together between them. Hendo took a deep breath and looked towards the house. Adam thought, by now, that he could trace the lines of Hendo’s face in his sleep. It had become the most important part of this quasi-life he was leading, an immoveable root, a soft reminder of his real world. Adam had invited him, after all, into his space. Hendo hadn’t come looking for it.

A week ago, Adam had been grappling with the idea that Hendo had an unusual beauty about him – in the peaks of his face but also in his stature, the way he held himself, the way he _cared_ – but, as they stood holding hands on the side of the mountain, Adam realised that Hendo had transcended that. It wasn’t that Adam thought he was beautiful now, Adam wanted to be part of it, for it to be with him always.

A weird kind of peace settled around his shoulders as he thought it. But when it came to Hendo, he knew he still had a long way to go before he figured out his thinking.

In response to Adam’s question, Hendo’s cheeks filled with his smile and he reached. With his free hand, he ran fingers over the edge of Adam’s jaw, rubbed a little dent into his chin. He was all long eyelashes, eyes all smouldering.

“Good,” he said quietly.

* * *

 

The last wisp of flame in the fireplace went out with a _whoosh_. Adam watched it happen from the couch, had watched the whole thing. A singed smell hit his nose. The end of the fire. His favourite part of the day.

He lifted the hand that had come to rest on the inside of his knee. “Hendo,” he said, squeezing it, “time for bed.”

Daisy, sandwiched between them on the couch, reacted first. He raised his head, with his ears pressed back: probably, Adam decided, to make his eyes look bigger, and beg them both to stay with him on the couch all night.

“Sorry,” Adam told him, on a whisper.

Hendo grunted. He raised his head slowly from the back of the couch. He made a throaty noise as his eyes slid half open – an attempt to wake himself. His hand squeezed into Adam’s. There was a pause, where Adam thought about leaning across to kiss him from this precious, sleepy state, but Hendo peeled himself up without further protest.

They’d been talking about nothing, really, inconsequential, nothings – like the best types of cake icing, and yearly sheep tasks – when Hendo’s head had lolled, and Adam had let him sleep. He had a book open on his lap, he had Hendo close, even if there was a dog between them. It was warm. It was comfortable, even more so with Hendo’s fingers pressed into the crease of his knee.

It was difficult to get up, in the end – Adam had cramped up like an old man after all that hiking, and Hendo had to come over and right him. His hands were all sturdy around Adam’s waist, the air everywhere all heady with his presence, and Adam just couldn’t stop snickering at the fact. He rolled forward to place his head on Hendo’s shoulder – the opposite shoulder to the one he just hadn’t seemed to rid from his mind.

“Hey,” he said, upstairs. Hendo had his makeshift pyjamas under one arm, and was making for the door out to change in the bathroom. Adam wished he wouldn’t excuse himself to do so, but, baby steps. “Can I ask you something?” Hendo hesitated, which Adam took to mean: _I guess_. “Come here.”

Hendo thought about it before he did.

Adam had raised his hands, and they were already fingering the edge of Hendo’s shirt buttons before he remembered to ask. _Calm down, Adam._

“I’m going to take your shirt off,” he said, as detached as possible.

“That’s not a question,” Hendo replied, one eyebrow arching.

 _Cheeky_ , Adam thought. With a little pride. _We’ve come far._

He rubbed the side of his thumb off the edge of the button placket until it tickled.

“No,” he agreed. Waiting. There was a slight tremble in his wrist that he was trying and failing to hide.

“Okay,” Hendo said, after an age. Adam suspected that he had been waiting for him to meet his eyes.

Adam carefully fingered each of the buttons free before he smoothed the shirt back over Hendo’s chest. Hendo beat warm against his palm, and Adam became immediately distracted from his task: his chest was dotted with tiny, delicate freckles – none of them bigger than a sprinkle, decorating Hendo across his sternum like a small collection of tiny, intricate constellations.

His breath came out like a wheeze as he drew lines between them with the pad of his thumb, carefully; as though if he pressed too hard he might accidentally rub them away. They were delicate, they _had_ to be: as all of Hendo was.

Adam remembered himself when he felt Hendo tip forward, felt his breath ruffle the edge of his eyebrow. He mustn’t get distracted. He could come back to the freckles. He intended to.

He pushed the shirt back further, smoothed his hand under the collar until he’d moved it back and over his shoulders. Adam had been looking for the scar, the shrapnel one that Hendo had told him about on the mountain. He had been curious about it, supposing it would be thin and clean like when Adam had had an operation on his right knee. So instead he blanched at the mangled mess on Hendo’s shoulder. The skin had been ripped in a jagged line; bordering now across the opaque new flesh that filled the space and surrounded by small, white pocks that might have been freckles themselves.

Adam forgot to breathe, and didn’t think to ask before he reached. He brought the tip of his finger down the torn edge. He expected it to be rough, but it was soft. Of course, it hadn’t stood a chance against the sharp edge of the metal. His mind stretched, reached for the pain, tried to fathom it. And this Hendo – with all his tenderness, _Adam’s_ Hendo – did not deserve it.

“It’s,” Hendo’s voice was throaty, breathed right above his ear, “not pretty.”

Adam’s finger had reached the bottom of the gash, and slowly began its ascent up the other side. He wanted to commit it to his memory. He reached his other hand, used it to support the curve of Hendo’s neck.

“No,” he said softly. Firmly.

Hendo’s breath stuttered slightly. His head turned, dipped, and he pressed his lips in against Adam’s neck – it was somewhere he’d never kissed him before. It was just under his ear, Hendo’s lips placed right, perfectly so when Adam’s heart beat it pulsed against them.

“ _Oh_ ,” Adam whispered.

Hendo’s lips parted, peeled off his skin, Adam hyper-aware of every particle of him they touched. Then they pressed down again, deeper this time. Adam curled his hand up from Hendo’s neck to grasp at his hair, urge him.

His eyes were still on Hendo’s scar when they slid shut.

Hendo whispered in his ear. “I’ve wanted to kiss you there for a really long time.”

* * *

 

Adam curled around to him in the bed. He had to dig his heel into the mattress for balance at the very edge of it, and as he turned he wrapped his knees around one of Hendo’s – pulling himself back into the warm spot he’d left. Hendo obliged, catching him and helping the movement by pulling Adam up to him by his ribs, and then – when Adam’s stomach had sufficiently wedged itself right up to him – took Adam’s face in his hands next.

“Alright?” he asked. Adam could barely see the silhouette of his cheek move in the dark.

“Yeah.” He let his head fall on the pillow, brushing what might have been Hendo’s nose on the way down. Then, “can we stay like this?”

 He meant the cuddle, mashed up together instead of Hendo curled around his back, but he wondered if the air didn’t sit a little differently around them when he said it.

“We can try,” Hendo replied. He didn’t smile.

* * *

 

Adam should have known something was up, when the jeep arrived back in the yard the next afternoon from the weekly Klopp call in town and the kitchen door didn’t almost immediately open to reveal Hendo. He decided, twisting to look at it – defiantly shut – that Hendo must have gone straight to the lambs instead.

This _was_ unusual, but Adam always sort of expected it when Hendo came back from town. Someday, for sure, he would decide that it was more likely that the lambs would get into trouble and not Adam; although if that day had to be today, Adam couldn’t help but be bitter. After their hike, it was like an extra layer had peeled off whatever was between them. It was more distinct now, how he felt. Like fog clearing. He was totally hooked on the feeling.

It was only several minutes later, when he had moved to begin the clean-up at the sink. It occurred to him to look up, and he saw right into the driver’s seat of the jeep where Hendo sat.

Something was wrong, Adam decided. He could see Hendo’s shoulders rise and fall, his breath steady, but he stared at the steering wheel with what Adam had previously considered a scowl: a deep frown, pulling his face into wrinkles and his eyebrows down to hood over his eyes.

Adam hadn’t even thought about his next move, when Hendo – with those Spidey-senses – looked up and met his eyes. Adam’s stomach twisted, churned: like it was being wrung out.

_Something’s happened._

He could have sworn Hendo had jumped a little when he caught Adam looking – but it was pretty unlikely.

More likely was that Adam had suffered a mini stroke in sheer panic.

In a process that seemed to take a hundred years, to the soundtrack of Adam’s own pulse pounding around the inside of his head; Hendo climbed out of the car, slowly pushed the door closed behind him, straightened, and made for the kitchen door.

Adam managed to turn himself around, gripping the side of the counter tight, just as he walked in.

“What?” He croaked and, helpfully, Hendo gave a little uncomfortable shuffle. “ _What_.”

Hendo cleared his throat, lifted his head. He didn’t look at Adam.

“They’ve got him,” he said.

He let the words hang in the air like the meant something. But they were so vague. Adam didn’t _know_.

“What.” Adam tried again, his brain whirring, leaping from one possible explanation to another faster than he could figure them out.

“They’ve got,” Hendo continued, “the man who shot the King.”

“Oh,” Adam said. A reflex.

“He was arrested this morning.”

 _The person who tried to kill_ me _._ The thought slammed into Adam’s head. That nameless, faceless, armed enemy that had come after his parents, forced him to run. At his sides, his hands curled into fists.

_Oh._

_Hendo should be relieved_ , he thought. _Why isn’t he relieved?_

He forced his fists to uncurl again and moved, down the counter top to touch at Hendo’s elbow.

“That’s good,” he started. “Right?”

“You can go home,” Hendo said. Then, “Sir.”

Adam flinched at the word. Under his fingers, a stone would have reacted more to his touch then Hendo did, then.

“Home,” he echoed, dully. “With you.”

He wasn’t entirely sure how he had meant that to sound. But Hendo didn’t take it well, if the fact he crossed his arms tight across his chest – more movement that he’d made in actual minutes – was anything to go by.

Adam hoped desperately he was interpreting this wrong, as his stomach somersaulted in panic.

“I’m not coming,” Hendo said, staring at the floor.

“No?”

“No,” he paused. “Sir.” Like an extra punch into Adam’s gut.

There were a few more horrible seconds of silence.

“The King,” Hendo continued, as if he was just reading and not chopping Adam’s soul into tiny pieces, “is considering abdication.”

Adam heard the words. He definitely heard them. And yet, something about them didn’t quite seem real.

 “The injuries he’s sustained are preventing the proper accomplishment of his royal duties, and he wishes to pass them on to you. Fully. It will be discussed on your return.” This was not the same voice, Adam thought with real pain, this was not the same person who had expressed a long-held wish to kiss the top of Adam’s neck only the night before.

“My return,” Adam said, with some force, blithely aware that he was missing the most important part of the sentence, “not _our_ return.” He wanted to rub creases, tease the character back into the space around Hendo’s eyes which was sitting flat and unmoving.

Hendo made a small attempt to tug his elbow free of Adam’s ever-increasing grip on it.

“I’ve resigned,” he said simply.

“What?” The word tasted like bile.

“I’ve resigned,” Hendo repeated. “I’m not going with you.”

There were several seconds where Adam’s heart thumped, too loud, in his ears; and he couldn’t think.

“Why?” What had happened? What could possibly have happened in a few short hours for everything between them to have changed? “But I _need_ you,” he added weakly, realising. It was horrible, like a great hunger: he needed those familiar lines of Hendo’s face – now too straight – and his rhythmic breaths, warm on the back of Adam’s neck in the morning. He _needed_ this stoic presence, that quite confidence, that brilliant smile that he had been getting so good at coaxing out. Somehow, he’d become too confident of it to ever think he’d need to cope without it.

Hendo let out a long breath, one he must have been holding. One that sounded an awful lot like, “ _please_ , Ads,” giving Adam hope that he hadn’t been willing to consider.

He tightened his grip, the blood on the inside of Hendo’s elbow pumped against the pads of his fingers.

“I need _you_.”

He felt the intake a breath.

“Kings don’t have boyfriends.”

The lowest blow. Adam felt as though he’d been knocked back three feet by the words. And Hendo knew, he knew what he’d said and what it meant, because he pulled his arm free and made for the door. Adam didn’t even register it closing behind him, because he was already looking out the window at Hendo’s back marching across the yard.

_Kings don’t have boyfriends._

Hendo had remembered himself, made the decision to end something they both knew couldn’t work; shattered the spell. Rebuilt walls that they had been paring back so carefully.

 _But I need him_.

It was an afterthought when Adam finally noticed Daisy, prancing around in a circle in the middle of the yard. Watching the door, turning to bark after Hendo, watching the door. _Is he waiting for me_? Adam wondered. _Because we always head to the lamb shed together?_

Adam could hear the creak of the heavy door, watched Daisy’s tail drop before he sprinted back across the yard. They both disappeared into the shed.

* * *

 

Liz found him.

Adam had slumped onto one of the kitchen chairs in a daze, trying to fit everything together in his head. Trying desperately to prioritize.

Someone had tried to kill him, and had been rounded up in record time. They weren’t on the run, possibly hunting Adam down on his mountain in the middle of nowhere. This was undoubtedly a good thing.

Then there was his father. His father who had a missed with an ache, who had been hurt, who Adam couldn’t be there for. He must really be in pain to want to give up the job he loved.

There was also the fact that Adam was possibly in for one hell of a job promotion. One he couldn’t be sure he was ready for.

Bottom of this list, he told himself, desperately needling the palms of his hands with his too-short nails as he rolled his fists ever more shut: was the resignation of his bodyguard. If it was possible to go even further down, he should firmly slot in how much he was clinging to every single one of their touches.

 _Your country, your duty, your_ people _,_ he tried to tell himself, over and over again, but all he kept thinking was _Hendo, Hendo, Hendo._

He had been bred to be ready for this moment. Until a week ago, he had been prepped immaculately for this moment. Now, he felt sick at the prospect.

This is where Liz found him, when she burst into the kitchen, possibly minutes, possibly hours later.

“I heard,” she began, “I _just heard_ – “ and came to an abrupt halt right in front of Adam. He _must_ have looked as bad as he felt, because she hesitated – no doubt running over rules of propriety, like Hendo had – and pulled him up by one arm into a hug.

Adam almost began to cry right there on the spot. Liz allowed him a few seconds to sink indulgently into the squeeze, patting his back all the while, before she gave him a gently nudge back to arm’s length.

“Alright,” she began gently, giving him a little shake. She paused, and Adam had a horrible feeling she was about to address him as “sir”. “I know. This is bigger than you or me, isn’t it?”

Adam nodded, although he didn’t feel like it. “Duty,” he agreed quietly. God, this feeling was _awful_. He needed to pull it together, needed to stop feeling so _small._ But he just needed a minute. A little more time. He would pull himself together. He _would._

“Right,” Liz said, smiling. Then, “I don’t agree with this one bit, you know.” She left him to get his balance back himself, heading towards the utility room door. “Him,” she nodded towards the window, “out in the shed. Sulking.”

Adam’s heart began to beat faster. It preoccupied him too much to be able to think of a reply. _Hendo._

“They sent out a car a few hours ago, it could literally arrive at any time.” From his standing position, Adam could see the door to the lamb shed was still shut. “You’ll have to get your things together, be ready.”

“I don’t have any things,” he called after her. Yet she came back into the kitchen with a zebra-striped t-shirt over one arm, and a large mauve-y woollen mass in her hands.

“Not true,” she said, a false edge to her chipper. The mauve-y mass fell out into a long scarf, which she then proceeded to wrap carefully around his neck. Adam remembered it. It was the one Liz had been slowly knitting beside the fire.

And Adam had wanted to bottle that feeling. He dipped his nose in under the edge of the scarf and took a deep breath.

“You’ll visit?” he asked quietly, as she draped the ends together. He felt very warm, and it wasn’t because of the extra layer of clothing. “Who else will I bake with?”

“We,” she said, giving his cheek a little tap. “Will try.” She sniffed slightly when she took a step back. Adam wanted to hug her again, but he didn’t.

* * *

 

The car began snaking its way up to them half an hour later. Adam stood by the door, clutching his scarf and his t-shirt as he waited. Brian put his mug down slowly in the countertop, but otherwise no one said a word.

Adam had used the time to alternate between gathering back little bits of dignity and composure, and glaring at the door of the lamb shed, _willing_ it to open.

 _I could go out there_ , he thought.

“He’s never really done well with bending the rules,” Liz said, joining him briefly.

“I’m not a rule,” Adam had replied, rather flatly.

“I’ll wager,” she gave him another small pat, he was sure, to waken him up a bit, “you’re the _biggest_.”

Emre, obviously the security team member elected for the job – Hendo’s replacement, Adam thought with a pang - was in the front seat of the car. Adam wasn’t sure how he felt about this – Emre didn’t have much to say, but he was annoyingly perceptive, especially when he had picked Adam up at odd hours of the night. Adam had been holding out for Klopp, that he might arrive and explain himself, but he wasn’t exactly sad about postponing reality for a little longer.

“Sir,” Emre said, smoother than his gelled hair, dipping his head in a way Adam would have to get used to, it felt like, from scratch. “Mr Henderson, Mrs Henderson. Thank you for taking excellent care of him.” Then he looked past them, and frowned.

Adam had just enough time to turn, and anticipate the run of the hyperactive sheepdog making a beeline for him. Daisy whooshed past him and turned in a wide loop, running the whole way around Emre’s car.

_The shed! He came from the shed!_

But the door was closed.

Instead, Adam bent into a crouch in time to catch Daisy on his return, and buried his face in smelly dog fur.

 _Hold it together_ , he told himself, breathing in wet dog. “Mind him for me,” he said, so only Daisy could hear, squeezing him.

He stood up.

“Alright,” he said, giving his best attempt at a Prince Adam smile. “Let’s get going.”

Emre even held the door open for him, which was a bit excessive.

“Where’s Hendo?” Emre said, at Brian and Liz. “I was hoping to say goodbye.” To their shaking heads he added: “so no talking him around, then?”

“No,” Adam said, gliding past him. Sinking into plush leather had exhausted him suddenly, and the word came out pained.

It was the first time he’d seen genuine surprise on Emre’s face. Adam supposed that sometime, a million years ago, that his disdain for Hendo had been plainly obvious.

 Adam watched the house through the back window, as it got smaller and smaller, set like it had always been part of the valley around it. When it was eventually reclaimed by the landscape, he turned and buried his head into his scarf.


	7. Chapter 7

“I wish you’d let me cut your hair,” Phil said, wistfully. He picked up a few strands of Adam’s hair by the ends, squinted at them, and let them drop.

“No,” Adam said. His reflection in the dressing room mirror scowled back at him.

“But that whole Spaniel look was so good on you. Now you just sort of look like a greasy drug baron.” Phil made a face. Adam’s reflected expression didn’t change.

The finger poked into his neck with alarming precision, and Adam’s spine snapped straight.

“You’re just creating more work for yourself,” he said, thinking about the resulting bruise.

“You,” Phil said, “are _moping_.”

“ _Ow_.”

“What’s going on?”

Internally, Adam cursed himself. He’d slipped – he’d slipped for just one tiny, goddamn second; and Phil had picked up on it in only the way an unofficial psychologist of his ilk could. Phil stared at him now, via his reflection in the mirror.

Adam forced a different smile on his face. It was difficult. For a moment, he looked a little constipated instead. “Coronation tomorrow,” he sing-songed. “But these magazine interviews are getting tedious, eh?”

Phil’s reflection waggled his comb at him, an extension of his warning finger.

“No,” he said, “that _other_ face you were just making.”

Adam pushed it out of his mind, tried to say _I have no idea what you’re talking about_. Except he didn’t: his reflection, anyway, just looked supremely guilty.

It had been a month since he’d arrived back at the palace. A _month_ , and he’d just realised it, right there in Phil’s makeup chair; and Hendo had just _walked_ into his head.

It was all happening so fast.

The press had been informed, but only to an extent. Enough so that Adam’s would-be assassin – a grumpy, slouchy, loud-mouthed man from Portugal with a fixation on the royal family; convinced, apparently, that they were all out to get him – was plastered all over the daily papers and news channels, even all these weeks later.

The world didn’t know, however, that Adam had been on the farm for most of the unfolding events.

The world didn’t know about Hendo.

Adam had decided, way back on his first day back in the palace, after his first meeting with his father and Klopp about the abdication plans: that his duty had to come first, and Hendo would have to be consigned to the past. He had thought he was being extraordinarily mature when he’d made it – definitely, silly whims about eloping to remote mountains with admittedly cagey staff members was no longer even a remote possibility – but it had been made with far too much leftover anger.

 _God,_ but it had hurt. Around the second day, Adam was going so mad from it he wondered if an actual, gaping wound in his chest could have been more painful. But, even though what had hurt initially had been the pain of Hendo letting him go as simply as snipping a rope; it had become worse. It had become worse the bigger and the colder Adam’s bed had got, because Adam _missed_ him.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he lied, blithely, in the present.

Phil picked at a few strands of Adam’s hair again, quiet.

“I know you weren’t on your yacht,” he said dully. “I mean, I’m not stupid. You’d never come back that shade of milky white for starters.”

Adam swallowed and cursed his tanning habits.

“And,” Phil continued, definitely not looking in the mirror, definitely swirling his powder brush in the compact for far too long, “no one knows what happened to Hendo. He wasn’t,” his voice quietened to a hush, “ _involved_ , was he? With the attempt?”

The fact that Phil probably didn’t believe it himself, that it was regurgitated palace gossip, didn’t even cross Adam’s mind before he half-leaped from his chair in Hendo’s defence. Words came out: a jumble of words that contained several _no_ s and far too many _nevers_ , when Phil’s look of alarm made him stop short.

The flurry of movement had made Phil drop his compact and it landed at their feet with a noise that indicated a definite shatter. Overheating with sudden embarrassment, Adam slid back down into his chair. He waited until he could not possibly make himself any smaller before he tried to force his apology up his throat.

Phil cut across him.

“You and _Hendo_?” he gaped, shrinking back from what was clearly an inconceivable idea. “ _Really?_ But you _hated_ him.”

Adam didn’t expect his words to come back anytime soon, so he nodded at Phil’s reflection.

 _But you hated him._ Oh, God. He had hated Hendo, hadn’t he?

“Don’t tell,” he croaked, eventually.

Phil remembered himself a little and straightened the bottom of his shirt. He bent down and scooped the ruined makeup container from the floor. It landed with a thud in the bin at Adam’s feet.

“I don’t even know where to start. Like: where? _How_?” A pause. “You like him?” Phil tried, testing. Then, finally meeting Adam’s eyes in the mirror: “because you don’t _like_. Him. Anyone.”

Adam’s throat was dry. Hendo, his hands around his cheeks. Hendo, on that mountain, the wind ripening the edges of his ears. Hendo, a lamb cradled to his chest. Hendo, kissing Adam like it was the most normal thing in the world.

In the present, Adam’s reflection licked his lips in Phil’s mirror, his shoulders slumping suddenly.

Phil leaned closer, Adam supposed, to keep his voice low.

“Then how come you’re here,” he said, “and Hendo isn’t.”

This, Adam had an answer to.

“Kings,” he began, his throat now coated in slime, “don’t have boyfriends.”

Phil’s nose wrinkled in thought. He straightened and reached for his comb again – despite having finished with Adam’s hair several minutes ago.

“No,” he announced, after a long minute. “They don’t have _boyfriends_.” And when Adam didn’t return the knowing grin: “Please: don’t tell me you haven’t considered it. You really like him? Then marry him.”

* * *

 

The final run-through had finished, leaving Adam standing in front of the cathedral’s grand altar, all adorned for the occasion with streamers in the country colours. All the gold had been polished to its highest shine, and tomorrow the incense smell would mix in with newly delivered flowers. In preparation, all the suits had been fitted, all the pictures had been taken and the exclusive interviews with the world’s media had been booked up for the remaining week. In the morning, the aisles would be filled with people Adam had only briefly met, Adam would recite a few words that he knew by heart, and then it would be over, and everyone would wonder what the hell the whole song and dance had even been about, anyway.

A bit like a wedding.

But unlike a wedding, Adam really supposed that he should have been feeling happier about it, and that the slightly ill feeling in the pit in his stomach wasn’t from something completely different altogether.

_Wedding._

Adam’s whole life had been building up to this moment and he knew he should have been revelling in it. But talking to Phil earlier had wedged this insane idea in his head and it wasn’t going anywhere, instead it sat in the space where his lunch from earlier should have been and flipped around – usually at inconvenient moments.

_Marry him._

God, it was ludicrous. Adam had immediately dismissed it. Practically, Hendo was common, and on top of that he was awkward, scowled far too often and it was plainly a match that offered no benefit to the crown. Adam had sat through enough match-making meetings to know that.

Unpractically?

Adam wanted Hendo with him. It was terrible, really, how easy it had become to depend on his company every day. How easy that intimacy had been – small smiles, soft touches, and not that endless feeling that a foot of air had to sit between Adam and everyone he talked to.

He had been guilty of not thinking much further than that. He had never been in a relationship, not really. He had never _instigated_ one. From what he could tell it wasn’t a skippable step. He wasn’t even sure what he’d had with Hendo would survive all the faff of a royal wedding. That maybe it was just too delicate and soft and precious for the stuffy etiquette required from a royal consort.

And yet? Would anything be better after a long, long day of politics to be able to come home and let Hendo take him in his arms?

This image was still swimming around, half formed and causing a fuzzy warmth to form in the space between his ears, when over his shoulder he heard an inconceivably ill-timed: “Boo”.

It was, of course, Studge with a million-dollar smile displaying his teeth from ear to ear.

“Cheer up, chum,” he said, mimicking cabinet ministers of exemplary peerage that they’d had to endure yesterday, “you only get one coronation.”

Adam couldn’t help but smile a little in return.

“It’s not going to change much,” he pointed out. “I’ve been basically doing the full job for two weeks now -”

“I was thinking of the afterparty,” Studge said, nudging him in the side. “It’s going to be a scorcher. You know it, because I planned it.”

Adam snorted back his laugh. “My partying habits have had to change a bit,” he pointed out. And when Studge shrugged, “you _know_ this. I’m settling down, remember? I’ve been cutting lots of ribbons lately, in case you didn’t notice. I’m getting a crown for God’s sake.”

“Especially,” Studge said, “since kings don’t have boyfriends.”

Adam’s head lifted up as fast as his stomach fell.

“Who told you?” he snarled. Something snapped his throat tight.

“Phil,” Studge replied, lazily pretending to admire the decorations at the altar. Although he might not have even been pretending. It was almost always impossible to tell with Studge.

Adam’s heart continued to hammer. _Hendo_. Now someone else knew.

They stood, side by side gazing up at the decorations, for several more, long seconds.

“I don’t get it.”

“Me neither,” Adam admitted, still feeling slightly choked in leftover panic. “I wish I did. It’s not even, it wasn’t…” he smushed his hand up through his hair, scrunching it between his fingers. He could manage to get quite a lot of it into his fist now. “It was just. I was happy. You know?”

“No,” Studge said. A prompt. A veiled acknowledgement that he had known, a little, all along, just how unhappy Adam had been. But before Adam could begin to articulate an answer: “I didn’t think _uptight_ was your type.”

Adam took a deep breath.

“It’s not. _He’s_ not. Uptight. Or my type, or – I guess it was weird. It was weird because I didn’t expect it. And then it was weird because it was so _comfortable._ ” He felt his own jaw loosen in desperation, the words evading him. “It was different. Than the others. You know, not even all that club stuff – but even the set-ups and all that… circus. He was with _me._ Not an easy lay. Not a future King. Just Adam.”

There was a silence as Adam attempted to swallow over an extremely large lump in his throat.

 “Why couldn’t this have happened,” Adam muttered, into the echo, “in a proper, formal set-up.”

“You mean, why didn’t you make _him_ the Earl,” Studge teased.

“I can’t anoint any more Earls. I need you to be my finest.”

“Shucks. But hey, wasn’t Hendo in the army?”

“ _We_ were in the army.”

“No but I think he had actual _responsibility_ in the army. Like he was a Major. Or had a Medal of Valour. Or something.”

Adam turned to him, blinking in astonishment. “How do _you_ know?” His fingers remembered with sudden, tingling clarity – how soft the ruined skin on Hendo’s shoulder had been. So, hushed: “can you find out?”

 “Well. Do you love him?” Studge asked, slightly more solemn.

Adam had been wondering this. He was wondering how he would know he’d reached that threshold, given that he had never been remotely near it before. Love was meant to be ethereal, passionate, fire. None of the literary descriptions had ever noted it as a feeling of comfort he wanted to bottle as fingers ran back through his hair, or a thickly knitted mauve scarf he always felt a little better wearing.  

Or was it better not to wonder, if Hendo had ended it so quickly?

He supposed that Hendo hadn’t forgotten him, or anything. Yet, he didn’t look like rushing to the palace any time soon. And maybe that had been a little too much of a factor in his moping, and not doing anything to solve it. Because what was the point?

“I don’t know,” he replied, finally. “But it was nice. It was just _really_ nice.”

Studge twisted his head a little. Adam knew him long enough to know that he was bracing himself to say something Adam might not like.

“You know,” Studge said, “that’s probably the most positive I’ve ever heard you describe time spent with someone.”

Adam looked at him and grinned. “Even you?”

“Even me.” Studge grinned back, although it did mask an expression of pity that Adam wasn’t used to seeing. “It’s just… well, he wasn’t exactly _nice_ to us before that. Was he?”

“No,” Adam admitted, thinking of Hendo’s expressed concern about Studge’s influence on their hike. “He especially didn’t like you.”

“Right,” Studge said, “it’s not like he’s RSVP-ed for tomorrow or anything.”

“You _invited_ him?” Adam croaked. Hendo? Showing up at the _coronation_?

“No, he doesn’t strike me as the eloping type,” Studge explained. Adam thought about Hendo’s soft kisses behind his ear, and silently disagreed. “But if he’s what you want, mate… I’m just trying to help. I wouldn’t have thought someone so severe was good for you.”

 _Good for me_ , Adam thought, _or better for someone else?_

Someone else in the space next to Hendo where Adam had been was, right then, vile enough to make him feel sick.

“I guess,” Adam said, up his slick throat, as they both turned in the direction of the clicking noise on the tiles: the Archbishop’s smart shoes and Adam’s father’s new cane, making their way across the church towards where Adam and Studge stood. “I guess what gets me the most is that he didn’t want to try. I always felt like I’d forced him into it. Maybe he just wasn’t too keen on this life.” _Maybe Hendo just wasn’t too keen on me_ , he finished silently.

Studge looked thoughtful for a second. “You remember the Croatian PM’s son, right?”

Adam had to think, but he did. “Right. He was a bit of a high hope.” The matchmaking set, the public – in fact, Adam had even been informed that “Adam & Dejan” tea sets were available in most tourist shops.

“You fancied him.”

“Only a little.”

“It nearly happened.”

“Yeah,” Adam added, “until everyone remembered that I had a veto. Anyway, that was ages ago. I’m not particularly up for a rebound – “but Studge was already shaking his head.

“Hendo,” he said, having to whisper. “He _hated_ him. Don’t you remember?”

The arrival of company meant that Adam pushed it all back, as far back as it could go, into his head. But for the rest of the evening Hendo continued to walk straight back into the forefront of Adam’s thoughts – interrupting his lines, his dinner, his final suit fitting – until Adam found himself still awake and staring at his bedroom ceiling.

_You remember the Croatian PM’s son, right?_

_He hated him. Don’t you remember?_

Adam didn’t remember it quite like that. But he did remember it, and when his brain worked, it remembered Hendo. Hendo had been over his shoulder the whole time. Adam had dismissed it, because he’d been a little new, but Adam had been courted by foreign diplomats before that he wasn’t even a little interested in and they’d had a lot more space. Come to think of it, it was around the same time that Adam had come to think of him as insufferable, and it had a lot to do with how they’d never been left alone long enough for Adam to get anywhere near Dejan’s pants.

But if that’s what Studge had been suggesting, it was madness. Hendo was just serious, not overprotective. He’d never tried to actually _stop_ Adam from going home with people, for example. If he was jealous, which was surely what Studge had been aiming at, he could have been more obvious about it.

Adam thought about that day in Hendo’s kitchen, where he’d completely misread the signs and had put his mouth on places where Hendo had not been ready for him to go. Adam had long decided that Hendo was uncomfortable with Adam’s lifestyle, over-exaggeratedly prudish; but maybe Hendo was just shy. But it was still a stretch to consider it jealousy, right? Hendo just hadn’t had _feelings_ , and he certainly hadn’t had _feelings for Adam_.

Adam sat straight up in bed. Being unable to escape his thoughts in sleep was recent but now not unusual, and there was often only one way to solve it. He was going to drive himself completely mad if he over-analysed this a moment longer.

He took the back stairs the whole, spindling way down to the basement, flicked on the light and shivered a little as he tested the coldness of the kitchen tiles with his stocking feet.

Like clockwork, he pulled out the flour, the sugar, the milk – he’d decided on his way down that scones were in order and he knew by now exactly where the mix of ingredients were hidden in the shiny industrial kitchen. He knew the kitchens were a tightly run ship, at that Ragy Klavan in his capacity as head chef would murder any disruptions to his impeccable order – but Adam had decided that he was, after all, nearly the boss. So far there had been no complaints.

He had begun to furiously rub the butter into the flour in a large bowl – a process he enjoyed, as it required so much concentration that he couldn’t think of anything else – when he developed the uneasy feeling that he was being watched, and looked.

It was his mum. The incumbent Queen had slid onto a stool across the counter quite unnoticed, and bits of butter and flour flew like confetti when Adam leapt backwards in surprise.

“Apologies,” she said, adjusting her nightgown a little. She smiled softly. “I was fascinated. I didn’t know that you baked until Ragnar spoke to me about it this morning.”

“Ragy spoke to you,” Adam echoed, coughing a little in the leftover dust from the cloud of flour he had created around himself.

“Yes,” she said, “he was concerned that you seemed to be coming down here in the middle of the night and leaving baked goods around for everyone in the morning.”

Despite everything, Adam had missed his mother a great deal.

“Oh.” He paused. “Sorry?”

“It’s alright,” she replied, “as long as you start offering them to me too.”

Adam smiled, feeling a little better.

“It helps,” he explained, returning to the rubbing, “clear the head.”

Adam continued to rub the butter between his fingers. He hadn’t quite reached breadcrumb consistency, but he was nearly there.

“You’ll enjoy tomorrow better though if you get some sleep,” his mother suggested, gently pulling him back from his concentration. “It’s a good day, and you’ll want to remember it.”

“Mum,” he began, and he nearly managed to tell her: his hands dropping with a dull _clink_ into the ceramic bowl as he tried desperately to explain that the looming coronation was not at the forefront of his mind. If anyone, his mother would understand the ins and outs of palace etiquette and put any notions Adam had been entertaining about any kind of reunion with Hendo to bed – that it was impossible, that he wouldn’t fit, that it wasn’t _enough_ to work. Instead he asked, “who on earth decided to hide me in the lake district?”

“Oh,” the Queen straightened on the stool, surprised. “It was a joint decision, of course. Between myself, and your father, and Jurgen. Of course.”

“And Hendo?” Adam asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Who decided,” Adam had to speak slowly, his stomach was twisting, “that it had to be with Hendo.”

“Oh, well. Jordan is a lovely boy – “

“ _Jordan_?” The only person who had ever called him “Jordan”, was Hendo’s own mother. He had the impression it was something that had to have explicitly granted permission.

“ – but your father suggested it.”

“He did?” Adam hadn’t even been aware that they’d crossed paths. Adam hadn’t even been aware that Hendo had ever been _friends_ , with _anyone_.

“Yes, because of the lichens.”

Adam coughed. Then he replayed the sentence in his head. And then he replayed it again.

“Excuse me?” he asked, finally concluding that he had completely misheard her.

“The lichens,” she said, clear as day. “You know – small mosses, and shrubs; although this was only something you would know if you ever tried any outdoor activities, dear – “

“What,” Adam cut her off, “the hell.” Not even for the Great Outdoors jibe, because he was used to it – he the only example of a couch potato in the entire Royal lineage, and he was proud of it.

His mother seemed surprised. “Well, your father hosted an event up in the North – you know the way the castle up there is in the mountains. He went out one morning for a walk and came across Jordan, who had been rostered on the security detail that weekend, and they started talking.”

“They,” Adam choked, “ _started_. To talk.” Adam thought back to how he had always known Hendo – unsmiling, monosyllabic. “About lichens. You’re making this up.”

But then, when he said it, he remembered the hike with Hendo. The country was his home, and he had seemed very keen to show off all of the shrubs that he knew. Adam had just thought he had been talkative, and endearing, and hadn’t really gone much further than that because he’d been overwhelmed by how besotted he was. But, it was actually entirely possible that Hendo just really liked plants.

Anyway. His mother looked miffed at the suggestion.

“Well, your father remembered it, and so when Protocol Yellow was being developed, he suggested Jordan,” the fact that this meant the first name terms came from the King made this phenomenal, “and Jurgen approved, as he acknowledged that Jordan has always shown exemplary commitment for tricky missions.”

 _Tricky missions_. Hendo going above and beyond the call of duty, collecting Adam in the middle of the night. Had he _signed up_ for it? Adam suddenly felt queasy.

He wished so badly that Hendo were there, with him. If now just to ask what the hell he was playing at. And with him in such a capacity that Adam would never feel remotely inclined to hook up randomly with anyone, ever again.

Adam’s mother had stopped. “You know,” she said, and Adam waited for the comment about Hendo’s commitment to the cause, “you could probably add the sugar now, before you rub that completely away.”

Adam looked down at his hands, the butter-and-flour mixture probably a little too fine, more like dust than crumbs. Hastily he wiped his hands on a nearby towel, and his mother waited until he had tipped the remaining ingredients into the bowl and had begun to mix before she spoke, thoughtfully.

“And you know, I approved. I thought he was always such a polite boy. So respectful.”

“Like the kind of guy you think I should be hanging out with, you mean,” Adam started sarcastically, but then she smiled. “ _No?_ ”

“I don’t know,” she said, “now that you mention it, he did look like he would be particularly wonderful with children.”

 _The lambs were bad_ , Adam thought, _but_ children.

 _Our children_.

The options had been discussed of course. Adam would have heirs no matter whom he married.

No. No he couldn’t even let his head _go_ there.

_And all this from a conversation about moss._

He finished rolling out his dough, trying to muster up the courage.

He heard the scrape of the stool and his neck cricked when he looked up, his mother fixing her dressing gown as she straightened.

“I went hiking,” he blurted out before she could excuse herself, “outside. When I was staying with Hendo. It was just – “ and in a flash, the feeling of Hendo’s shoulder tucked around his as they sat side by side – smelling vaguely of soap and sandwich and dog, “- I’d do it again. Just so you know.”

“Well then,” his mother smiled, kindly. “He must be _very_ special.”

As so she left him to ponder it, crouched in front of the oven and watching his scones rise.


	8. Chapter 8

 

“I wish you’d shave your beard.”

Jordan didn’t look up from his toast. “No.”

Behind him, his mother put down the utensils she’s been washing back down into the sink with a watery _clink_. “But that clean-shaven look was so good on you. Now you just look like you’re _trying_ to be a mountain man, and we both know that’s not the case.”

Jordan felt a sudden soft pressure at his knee and ducked his head under the table to look. Daisy – now a house dog, probably because Jordan’s parents had felt that sorry for him recently – had dropped his chin onto Jordan’s trousers in expectation of toast.

“No,” he said, to the dog.

His mother went quiet and went back to washing up after breakfast. Jordan reached for the butter, relieved that this morning’s unprovoked attack seemed to be over much sooner than usual. As long as she didn’t decide to bring up the significance of the day, and then subsequently attempt to gauge Jordan’s reaction to it; he could slip out the door and off to work and may actually have something resembling a pleasant morning after all.

But, in the end, it didn’t even need an intervention. On its way to the butter dish Jordan’s hand knocked off the top level off the morning’s newspapers and, in the end, he ruined his day by his own damn self.

 _Final preparations_ , the headline read, in massive capital letters. Then, the sub heading: _future King leaves cathedral the day before his coronation flanked by closest advisors_. And then two pictures.

“He’s wearing the scarf I knitted for him,” his mother said from behind him. She sounded sad. “You know, we all miss him.”

“He’s not dead, Mum,” Jordan managed, over the sudden static in his head that seemed to have replaced coherent thought. Somewhere else, very far away, Daisy nudged his snout against Jordan’s elbow, still on the hunt for toast.

In truth, because of the scarf, Adam had been nearly rendered anonymous – this being a sneaky, fuzzy night picture of Adam exiting through a back door – he drowned it in, it went well up and over his nose and the sides met the end of the woolly hat he’d pulled down over his ears. But it was the picture beside him that bothered Jordan the most. That it clearly showed _advisors_ meant Daniel Sturridge, and that Adam had turned his head back in his direction and was laughing it something he’d said.

Adam, _Adam._ Adam. He hated the way his name reverberated through his body in time with his heartbeat, thumped against the inside of his ears. Jordan should not even think of him as something as familiar as _Adam_. Not anymore, nor should he have ever. So, Jordan shouldn’t care what he was doing with his spare time, or what his friends were planning for him in his spare time. How or who Prince Adam decided to fill his bed with would never again be a concern of Jordan’s.

This should have been freeing. Instead, it was as if someone had reached into his chest cavity, taken a hold of something in there and twisted it.

“Your Dad is coming in later,” Jordan’s mum continued, and she reached out and squeezed his shoulder, “to watch the coronation. It’s on TV at one.”

The chair legs squealed angrily against the tiles as Jordan stood. He couldn’t listen to this again.

“I’m sure he’d like to think you were watching,” she continued. Daisy had registered that they were going outside and was now dancing around Jordan’s knees, hindering his attempts to quickly retrieve his coat and complete a speedy exit. “He must miss you too.”

Jordan made a disgusted, snorting noise that was cut off by the scrambled way he shrugged on his coat. He pointed back at the photos on the kitchen table.

“He’s not thinking about me,” he said plainly, and then he opened the door to let the dog out first.

Daisy was another problem. As soon as Jordan made a move towards the lamb shed, every morning without fail, Daisy would turn back and look at the kitchen door expectantly – as though some toast was likely to follow them out. Normally he’d snap out of it by the time it took Jordan to walk half way across the yard, but this morning it got under his skin more than usual.

“He’s not coming,” Jordan snapped, “he wasn’t even here that long!”

Daisy turned his head and gave Jordan a half-wag of his tail in acknowledgement before he turned back to the door.

Jordan turned, and considered marching in the direction of the lamb shed. He’d already been out this morning, and Alberto would be out in half an hour. He didn’t like being in the shed anymore, anyway. It reminded him too much of what he was trying to get away from. The lambs were getting big and didn’t really need him anymore.

Instead, he set a different course and marched up the hill. Daisy, he could hear, also preferred this plan and had started after him, barking.

 _A distraction for us both_ , he thought, as Daisy overtook him in a sprint.

Jordan was furious. Jordan had been furious for an entire month straight now, he realised it as he pounded his feet into the mud up the mostly vertical slope.

He was furious with the King. That he had been singled out, hand-picked quite so suddenly, the credentials for guarding the heir to the throne based solely on a knowledge of mountain flora, a hobby Jordan was meant to enjoy and not be this brutally punished for. Jordan was furious that the King had liked him, because not everybody liked Jordan.

He was furious at his parents, for their complicity in it. He wished they would have stepped in, stopped him, stopped it all – never let him work for the palace in the first place, but never letting him become so engulfed by everything that was Adam would have even been preferable.

Adam. _Adam._ Adam formed part of Jordan’s fury too. Jordan was furious, _so_ furious, that in a few short days Adam had become entirely his, had opened up, softened, cared.  Had been so unlike the Prince that Jordan had known. Had allowed Jordan to kiss him in ways Jordan had scarcely let himself believe he could. Had become someone Jordan could love.

And so Jordan thought, lifting himself finally up onto the ledge, to the place he had brought Adam: he had to concede that there was only one person he could be downright livid with, and that was himself.

He should have stopped it. He could have kept the wall up.

Could he have?

This thought was rudely interrupted when a large, wet sheepdog appeared in the line of vision to his left, closely followed by a long, pink tongue.

“ _Daisy_!” he swatted him away. Daisy did not take it personally, instead sitting down beside him on the ledge, his tail _whoosh-whoosh_ ing behind and looking very pleased with himself. Jordan furiously rubbed at the worst affected part of his chin, then relented; reaching an arm across Daisy to scratch behind his ear.

“Is it just,” he began out loud, a little pathetically, “did I not know what it was, because I didn’t know the signs?”

Adam, the _Prince,_ in his palace life had not initially ignited anything in Jordan, exactly. It was a job. Nothing could have hurt him more than the lingering feeling of his shoulder knitting back together around metal that didn’t belong. The remaining ache of a forced discharge, the certainty and family of his unit on the field was now gone. But he needed a job, he needed to be busy, he’d fitted the credentials and his new boss seemed to like him. Well, he’d liked Jordan enough to take him on a life-changing experience in only his second week.

Jordan had been confused when they’d pulled up outside a club, letting the Earl of Sturridge out with the Prince – which should have been Jordan’s first warning. The prince’s every move was vetted, and even social event screened for days in advance. And Klopp was just going to _let him out of the car._

“He won’t get far,” Klopp explained, quite nonchalantly to Jordan’s horror, as they drove the car around the back. “And I trust Studge.”

Jordan didn’t remember a whole pile about the night, apart from the pungent smoke and beer – and it wasn’t because he’d joined in the party. It was because it was the first time Jordan had seen another guy put their hands on Adam – _the prince_ – and the sight of it, that weird visceral tenderness at the beginning and how Adam had just _fallen_ into it, desperate for it; had tied Jordan’s throat in a double knot so tight he had been unable to speak.

The stranger had led Adam from the club, into the back of a taxi, which they had followed down into the suburbs. He’d lead Adam into the front door of his house with clear intent. Jordan and Klopp had then sat outside in the car and waited, and Jordan had tried, he really had tried to ask, but he couldn’t over the feeling that he would be immediately sick if had.

“They’re not,” Klopp broke the silence first, “playing Scrabble in there.”

He had meant it to be funny. Jordan found little funny about it, especially as Adam kissing that man had been playing on a loop in his head, trying to figure out what about it had set every neuron in his body quite so on fire in the worst possible way. Like Adam had thrown himself into it so desperately that it could only be false. But why? Why put himself through that?

“You don’t like it.” Klopp said then.

Jordan shook his head.

“It’s what he wants,” Klopp had continued, when Jordan didn’t.

“Is it?” And when Klopp had raised an eyebrow, “why doesn’t he think he deserves better. Than this.”

 _This_. Jordan noticed the lights on behind the closed curtains like a thump in the sternum.

Eventually, after what could have been hours, the light went off. Then, several minutes later, Adam appeared at the front door. He closed it with care, like the ginger steps he took down the front path. Opened the door of the car, lifted himself inside with great effort.

“Why are you here?” he snapped at them both, decidedly soberer that he had appeared not that much earlier.

“Hendo’s new,” Klopp said, pleasantly.

Adam flopped down into the seat and stretched back to lie flat. It seemed to take him an awful long time, like it hurt. Jordan wondered why it would, and then he coloured.

“We’re good, by the way,” Adam said, still surly. “He didn’t recognise me. We can go.”

And Klopp began to drive. Jordan sat back against his seat, and he tried, he really tried, but he couldn’t stop his eyes from glancing up at the rear-view mirror.

Adam looked… different, there, lying back with his arms draped across his face. More vulnerable than anyone with two fully armed security personnel present should seem.

 _But he’s safe,_ Jordan thought, _he’s safe because he’s with me._

There was an angry-looking red mark on Adam’s skin, just under his ear. Jordan thought of the guy in the club leaning into that place with his teeth, and the expression that had broken over Adam’s face. His throat stretched so tight he thought it might snap.

_So why does he do that. Why does he do that, when he could be safe?_

Adam’s eyes opened, right into Jordan’s in the rear-view mirror. Panic froze his insides and he looked sharply away.

Adam may have looked vulnerable, but the defensive shutters that had smashed down were _sharp_. Jordan regretted even looking. Jordan regretted even getting in the car. Adam looked intent on holding both actions against him.

They let Adam off at the back of the palace, where Emre was waiting to usher him inside. Klopp then drove the car around to the back garage, and when he’d parked, he turned to Jordan.

“As his personal bodyguard,” he said gently, “you don’t have an opinion.”

“No,” Jordan agreed, decidedly feeling sick, “but I do.”

He wondered why he had the idea that Klopp was _impressed_ by this. Certainly, he was picked as a matter of routine as Adam’s clubbing babysitter from then on. Every time he would watch as Adam smothered himself into a stranger with barely tempered fury and something else caustic that he couldn’t put his finger on. For two and a half years, every time he would then follow them home, sit in the car in silence, wait. Sometimes he’d wait all night. Adam wasn’t meant to stay all night, but Jordan could not bring himself to question it, so wound up was he by the time Adam would appear again.

But this was the thing.

Then it would just break. Relief would wash over him as Adam relaxed back into the seat. His hard expression would ebb away as Jordan pulled out from the kerb, and Jordan’s lungs filled, floating somewhere near the moon.

 _He’s safe now_.

Jordan thought, in the present: _I didn’t know the signs._

So, when exactly had he realised?

He knew when he took Adam away from the meeting with Klopp in that petrol station that the wall of their professional relationship needed to be larger than ever. He’d tried. He’d really tried. Even after he’d woken up in his bed one morning completely compromised with Adam, beside him; he’d pulled it all back in, somehow. He could ignore it. He told himself that was immune to suddenly being the main object of entertainment in Adam’s world, repeatedly. Adam needed to be safe, and that was the most important thing.

But then Adam had kissed him. Adam had _needed_ him and Jordan could only kiss back in a way he thought Adam had always deserved.

No, he decided right then: in a way Jordan had always wanted to kiss him.

It had taken all night for Jordan to descend from that cloud. All night he had sat in the chair across from the couch, watched Adam sleep his troubled sleep and thought _I love him, I love him, I love him_. Never had he felt this, that his whole being bent and shaped and would do anything for another person. Any resistance to the crumbing of his carefully built wall was always going to be futile, after that. Jordan had been too willing to believe that Adam had never wanted more from all those other guys. The consequences just seemed to get pushed further to the back of his mind.

But of course, it couldn’t last. Adam being with him when they were completely isolated and in hiding was one thing, but Adam’s life as the future sovereign (imminently, _the_ sovereign) would be different. It had been so, so easy to promise Adam the world when he was curled up to him, with eyes that stretched forever, all browns and caramels, irises fluttering like silk. The other Adam, the one who lived in a palace, would have no time for him. Adam would get bored of him. And when Klopp had called to say he would be taking Adam back, Jordan knew he had done the right thing. Adam went quite easily in the end and what Jordan felt about that did not matter.

Jordan couldn’t be what Adam needed – Adam needed a diplomat, royalty; this had all been made very clear, and Jordan was staff. And, on a slightly more self-conscious issue, he couldn’t be sure he could give Adam _what he needed_ – and he thought about Adam’s wandering hands, where he had tried to put his mouth, how that had made Jordan feel _everything_ – at least not in the way he was sure Adam had come to expect. He felt his cheeks burn.

Daisy barked somewhere, far away, and it broke Jordan from his reverie with relief. It was a mistake to come here. He couldn’t afford to think like this anymore, and he couldn’t – his hand reached out, touched the stone beside him with the memory – linger on how just how _much_ Adam had made him feel.

Weighing a thousand tonnes, he lifted himself up from his ledge. He just so tired, now. He was tired of being angry. Daisy was already far ahead of him down the slope, dancing in circles. Jordan started after him.

It was still hard accepting that he would never have that assurance and wonderful, brief feeling of elation that Adam was completely safe again. Safe in his car, safe in Jordan’s tiny bed, right up against him and unexpectedly soft and warm. Jordan would never know otherwise because that was someone else’s job now, not _his_. Whether it was safety from faceless assassins or very, very real other men in clubs, or Adam from himself, Jordan would never be quite sure. The fear tugged at the bottom of his gut almost constantly. There was jealousy too. How could Adam ever be as safe as he had been with Jordan? And no one, he was certain, could know Adam’s favourite sandwiches.

He had timed his descent completely wrong. He arrived back at the house to find that the coronation ceremony hadn’t even started, and that his mum was delighted, so sure that he’d done it on purpose that she practically shoved him down onto the sofa to make sure he saw the entrance procession.

“He’s not here yet,” she blabbed, flustered enough for them both. This was good, because Jordan felt a little dazed, but also because he had it on good authority that his outward expressions of emotion needed serious work. Tea had been pushed into his hands, but he was only vaguely aware of the hot ceramic of the cup scalding the ends of his fingers. Somewhere Daisy barked – Jordan remembered that he’d been left outside, but then the royal procession appeared on the screen and muted any other sound that might have met his ears.

The motorcade made its way down the large parting in the middle of the street, and distantly, behind the blue flashing lights, came the royal carriage. Off-screen, the commentator of the program made some drawly remark about the age, and the make, at the camera zoomed right up the window. Jordan saw a gloved hand, the edge of a frilly epaulette, but he did not see Adam.

This wasn’t real unless he saw Adam.

“I don’t want to watch this,” he remembered, out loud. Both of his parents ignored him. His feet, which he willed to carry him away, did not seem to have heard him either. Daisy was still barking.

The carriage continued its route towards the cathedral, the commentator continued to drawl uselessly, hundreds of national flags waved and in the crowd, someone was wearing a mask of Adam’s face.

The carriage reached the grand front doors after what seemed like an age. The view then switched momentarily to the inside – the congregation were on their feet, humming nervously. Down the back, Jordan saw the ghost of Klopp gliding along the wall. He yearned, again, for his old job. They had a well-oiled plan so Adam would be safe, but Jordan did not know it, and his knee began to twitch.

The first notes of the grand organ rang through the room. The camera focused on the Prime Minister of Spain, the Earl of Sturridge in an ostentatious bowler hat, the former King and Queen who seemed to stand out from the rest of the front row with the way they held themselves. Proud.

Several more organ notes followed, and an expectant hush fell over the crowd. Heads turned. Jordan was so far forward in his seat that he was suddenly surprised that he hadn’t yet run out of chair to sit on. He dropped his hands to push himself back onto the couch, and his tea spilled down over his knees. He yelped on a reflex before he felt the pain and dropped his eyes to his scalded lap. His mum shushed him loudly and left him to wipe himself down furiously.

By the time he looked up again, the royal procession was halfway down the aisle. The camera zoomed on the great cloak draped around his shoulders, the ornate, fur-lined edges the only break between the red velvet of the cloak and the carpet as it trailed along behind him. The camera panned, up his back, up the slicked back mane of hair.

Jordan hadn’t been as oblivious to Adam as he’d wished, and this was mostly thanks to his parents dropping bombshells on his progress over mealtimes. So, he knew thanks to his mother’s tutting that Adam had been growing his hair out, and he was now relieved – over-joyed – to see that the nest on top of his head resembled nothing nearly close to the soft hair Jordan had been allowed to smooth back with his fingers. In fact, he thought with unusual elation, and with unusual meanness, that it didn’t look like it was really part of his head at all – rather like it has been stuck down, like a thick, straw helmet.

When Adam reached the altar, and the camera turned slowly – somewhere, some minions were rearranging his cloak, but Jordan could not tear his eyes away from Adam’s face, searching – Jordan thought with glee, that he looked nothing at all like himself. That this person on the screen could not possibly be the same one that regarded him with scorn in the backseat of his car, needed the touch of strangers, and neither was he the same one that curled back against Jordan in his sleep, moved closer during dinner so that their knees pressed together under the table, drank up every word Jordan said. Jordan was _relieved_ , as this Adam’s lips began to move, began to speak. Reciting an oath he had learned off by heart.

Jordan’s relief was short lived.

After the oath – Jordan couldn’t be sure, his ears were ringing so that he couldn’t hear the television – Adam stood and turned to sit back into the throne, placed on the altar for the occasion. The camera stilled right in front of him, so that he filled the screen from the waist up. Adam’s gaze focused, determined, at some point above the camera. Off screen, to each side, someone handed him the sceptre and orb, and then he began to speak.

There might as well have been no screen between them. Adams lips moved, carefully, deliberately shaping words that he knew but didn’t mean. Jordan grew roots. It didn’t matter about the hair, or the clothes, or the size of the crown being slowly lowered to fit onto Adam’s head, right so the curl at the ends of his hair sat snug against the rim. Jordan recognised every movement of Adam’s face, knew those creases in those cheeks, willed for them to twist back to reveal that enormous smile that had lit up their whole house on a whim. His eyelashes were as long as Jordan remembered, as he blinked, and they fanned down long enough, almost, to brush the top of his cheeks. Jordan thought about how the light behind his eyes had dulled – boredom he recognised from the tone of his speech.

The camera panned. The archbishop was speaking. In the front row, the former King and Queen were beaming. Adam stared rigidly ahead, unblinking, as the final rights were read. The organ began again, the congregation stood. Jordan wondered if Adam deliberately did not smile on his way out, or if he was imagining that he looked a bit ill. His nails dug down into the couch cushion at this thought, as though he half-hoped that Adam’s nerves would either be solved or stoked if he had been present.

But it didn’t matter, because he’d given up on that. _Stop it._ Adam had asked him to come with, but he could not possibly have meant it – because there he was a King, with a role and duty and not a wayward farmhand - and Jordan had said no, and it had been the right thing to do.

Deliberately, he un-hooked his fingers from the couch.

“Tea?” he croaked, at his parents. His mum shushed him again, a little absently, and his Dad sat leaned into his hands, elbows propped up on his knees; riveted on the screen.

Jordan made himself stand. It was easier now that Adam’s face no longer filled the screen.

 _It’s not_ Adam, he told himself, fiercely; _it’s the King_.

He repeated this to himself as he filled up the kettle.

_The Adam you had, who you thought was yours? What an idiot. He never existed outside of this farm._

Feeling better, he looked up and out the window. Beside him the kettle rumbled to life.

_You’ve seen him. It wasn’t that bad._

It was, but he could ignore it for the purposes of this exercise.

_Let him go._

He shut his eyes tight. The outlines of Adam’s lips moved behind his lids. Despite his best efforts to disassociate the man in the ostentatious dress on the television from the one that let out soft mewls of appreciation when Jordan took him in his arms, Jordan could not stop thinking about how those lips had felt.

The kettle flicked off again and the steaming sound softened like a hush. The sound of the commentator filtered in from the sitting room again, an annoying intrusion to Jordan’s attempt at resolve.

“ _I’m sure we all have already heard the exciting news that broke this morning – “_

 _What,_ Jordan thought wearily, _please tell me we’ve moved on from the coronation ceremony._ He reached to retrieve a mug from a nearby shelf.

“ – _because tomorrow morning – and this is exclusive, you’re really hearing it here first – “_

Jordan didn’t care. He tried his best to block it out.

“ – _tomorrow morning a meeting of the Lineage and Succession committee has been convened.”_

Jordan’s ears pricked. He felt himself move back over towards the living room.

“The what?” he heard his dad hiss, a distinct effort to keep his voice low.

“The royal wedding planners,” his mother whispered back. If Jordan felt anything, it was her dismay. “But - I thought – “

“ _… and if the prospect of a Royal Wedding this summer isn’t enough for you, our source has more: the King has called this meeting_ himself.”

“So?” Brian muttered at the TV.

“ _He’s seeking permission to propose personally rather than through the more formal channels. Whoever this mystery fiancé is, they’re_ very _special - ”_

 Jordan didn’t feel the cup drop, but he heard it smash at his feet.

He couldn’t really feel his fingers, or his knees, so it was really incredible that he even made it as far as the sink before he heaved. He paused long enough to register the burn in his throat, that it was making tears leak from his eyes, before he heaved again.

It took several long minutes for feeling to return to his fingers, and he hunched over the counter top with his face buried into his elbows as he tried to breathe.

_Very special._

This had all felt as though it was decided on Jordan’s terms until now. That, he could have lived with.

Adam had someone else. Someone _special_. In no time at all.

His stomach flipped, now empty.

Weakly, he reversed onto one of the chairs at the kitchen table. His mother pulled up next to him, proffering a glass of water and he felt suddenly guilty that he had let any of this happen.

 _Adam,_ he thought, with an ache. _Someone very special._

Liz rubbed at his arm.

“It’s okay,” she said, and he deliberately avoided her gaze of unending pity, “we know you cared about him, sweetheart.”

 _I deserve this,_ Jordan thought, _I thought that I loved him. I am an idiot._

“It’s not the same person, mum,” he said, between mouthfuls of water. For the first time in the longest time, he watched the glass with some contempt that it wasn’t something stronger. “It doesn’t matter. He was different, when he was here.”

“I know,” she said gently, “but he really _adored_ you.”

“Did he,” Jordan said, flatly. “Kings don’t have boyfriends, they have husbands.”

“Yes,” she said, with some nerve, “but you might’ve less regret if you’d just told him how you feel.”

“ _Regret_ ,” Jordan snorted. As if it were that simple. As if Adam could ever have been his.

She seemed to have no answer to that, rubbing his hand between hers.

Jordan’s temples pounded. He couldn’t go and see the lambs, not today. Alby would be there, lying in wait. Jordan couldn’t face round two of this.

“I need to lie down,” he announced. “I’m over it,” he promised, “all of it,” just a white lie.

In his sleep, he drew Adam to him in his bed.

* * *

 

Resolve was easier after that, and for the rest of the day he avoided the farm. He found half-finished tasks around the house to busy himself with, and in the evening sat with his parents at the dinner table and ate to the best of his ability as though nothing had happened. Unfortunately, this meant silence, lots of silence, on his part; and his parents tiptoeing around him on the other. Yes, he agreed outwardly, he would go and meet Bec next week for a coffee. It made his mother happy and Jordan was sure that he would be happy about it too, at some point. It would be nice to be able to get along with someone who didn’t _know_.

It came back to him in bed that night, as this new confidence dimmed the gnawing sensation in his gut. The lambs would move out into the fields soon, and then he would get another job. Bec would know someone, preferably far away from here. A fresh start, he thought with ease. And it would be _soon_.  He would miss his dog again, but it would be impossible to find somewhere to rent with a sheepdog in tow.

With this resolution he had his best night’s sleep for weeks, and rose feeling lighter that he could have felt. Adam had moved on, and so would he.

His new buoyancy deflated a little when he reached the kitchen, as he had the distinct impression that his mother was still mad at him, and that is was possibly Adam related. She certainly sniffed a little at him when he entered. But with this new grim determination he ignored it, and set about organising this breakfast.

“That _bloody_ dog,” his mum hissed, leaning up and over the sink to look out the kitchen window.

Jordan felt personally offended. “Daisy?”

“He’s… _rolled_ in something,” she replied, craning her neck.

Jordan stood up to look. “Like what?”

Outside Daisy stood looking up at them through the window, tail wagging at the attention. Something dark and grimy lodged in blotches in his fur, Jordan thought it might even have been a little bit green.

“Something dead,” she said. “Something that’s been dead for a _while_. Can’t you smell it?”

Jordan could, indeed, smell it.

“Yuck,” he acknowledged, although with little venom. _Nothing_ could dampen his spirits today. “It’s because it’s his first night outside in a while.”

She gave him a funny look. “You know what to do, then.”

“What?”

“Clean him. _Now_. He is _not_ coming inside until you do.”

Because she was upset, and because it had little to do with the state of his dog, Jordan said. “Yeah. Breakfast first though,” before he scooped his plate up and headed out to eat into the sitting room.

It took him a little longer to eat because there was still the lingering smell of decay at the back of his nose, but he still stepped out into the midmorning as prepared to hose down his dog as he’d ever be.

“You’re too smelly for me to even think,” he said, pulling on his wellies over some well-used overalls and heading over towards the sheds to where he knew there was a tap. “C’mon.”

Delighted, Daisy danced after him, but looked completely distraught when the first bucket of cold water was chucked in his direction.

“Get _back_ here.” Jordan looped his fingers through Daisy’s collar to bring him back to heel. They had shampoo in the shed that they sometimes used on the sheep, and he rubbed it into Daisy’s fur now, carefully teasing the stain out. It was gluey and sticky like tar, and smelled _awful_. This didn’t allow for much other thought, so Jordan hummed as he worked.

 _I’m free now_ , he thought, _I thought it was terrible yesterday, but it’s not. If Adam can move on –_

Daisy started to bark, the vibrations sending suds all over Jordan’s face.

He stood up to wipe them off. “What the hell?” he said, “cheers, mate.”

But Daisy wasn’t barking at him. Daisy was barking at the shimmer that had just started up the winding dirt road to the house.

“It’s just Dad, Daisy,” Jordan said. But something about the movement of the car was off. He squinted as it drew closer, passed through the gate at the bottom of the hill.

_Two cars._

_Alby?_ He wondered. But he could already hear the soft rumble of the engines – no jeeps there.

He stood frozen to the spot. Should he be worried? But who even knew he was here? There was a gun hidden upstairs, but maybe he was just being dramatic. Maybe they were callers for his mum, and the prospect of visitors this morning had put her on edge, and it wasn’t even his sulking.

The cars drew nearer. Daisy kept barking.

They really were incredibly shiny cars, he thought. City cars, obviously. Jaguars on closer inspection – he could spot them from any distance, they were a Royal family favourite.

Should he move? Should he hide? If they were fancy friends of his mothers, he was covered in shit and suds, so maybe hiding was the best idea.

The first car drew up outside the back door, a door opened and it took Jordan too long to reconcile the image – Daniel Sturridge, an icon of splendour, standing in the mud on his farm. The back door to the kitchen swung open and his mother stood there in her apron, about to speak when the second car door opened and Jordan saw the Queen’s head appear. _Former queen_ , he corrected himself. His mother collapsed a little into the doorframe.

_Shock. She wasn’t expecting them either._

_Why are they_ here _?_

The doors of the other car began to open and among the emerging faces Jordan saw Emre, saw Klopp – but he forgot, suddenly, because Adam was climbing out of the car on the side nearest to him.

Anything Jordan had thought was resolve, or self -determination, or confidence, burst quite spectacularly. Adam’s long hair was out loose, and he scraped it back into place as he straightened – only for it to fall in half-ringlets down over his eyes. At the back door, Jordan’s mum had clasped her hands to her mouth.

 _The King_ , he told himself. _He’s the King!_ But his heart sang for him: _Adam, Adam, Adam,_ my _Adam._

It hit Jordan like a kick to the stomach.

 _I love_ all _of him._

There was the wonderful familiarity of his gait, the way he reached up to scratch at the back of his neck, how his shoulder blades curved out from under his shirt, his back to Jordan, in conversation over the roof of the car.

_Why is he here? Did he forget something?_

Ducking back out of the way into the shed had just crossed his mind when Daisy took off from beside him at a gallop.

“ _Daisy!_ ” he said with a yelp, but it was no good, and it was like his voice carried – up and over and in a way it never had across the yard so that the small gathering at the back door suddenly stilled.

Everyone except Daisy, who was yipping in delight and leaving a trail of suds in his wake.

Adam saw him coming and broke into a smile. Jordan saw it from the whole way across the yard, because he had been desperate for it, desperate for Adam, the only thing he had wanted for all these months and years.

Daisy was nearly at Adam’s feet when he peeled off in a wild circle and back towards Jordan, skipping, dancing, as if to demonstrate how Jordan felt inside: _Adam’s here! Adam’s here!_

There was a flurry of pointing, and Adam’s head – the only one that mattered – swivelled around and focused on Jordan over beside the shed. And then he began to march in his direction.

Jordan could not have moved if he’d had the will, but he didn’t. It was unfamiliar to see Adam in real time in clothes that fitted him. Mud began to inch up Adam’s cream trousers, and his shirt was well fitted and expensive.

 _He looks good_ , Jordan thought. _So good. Much better than the TV yesterday led me to believe._

_What does he want from me?_

Adam was halfway across the yard, his expression serious. Daisy danced around his feet. Jordan curled his nails into his palms.

It occurred to Jordan with a second punch to the stomach.

 _He’s here to tell me that he’s getting married._ It was the kind of stupid, chivalrous, needless thing Adam would do. _He’s here to tell me before I hear from anyone else._ The gnawing sensation moved up from his gut, through his stomach, closed his throat. _But he can’t. I’ve never loved anything, and I love_ him _._

Everything about him. How he’d been soft, how he’d been stubborn, arrogant; that he’d laughed at things Jordan had said and held lambs carefully to his chest. That Jordan would never forget how his nose curved, now that Adam drew closer, and how his lips tightened, that Jordan could see the place on his neck where Adam had let him kiss him, and that this was the last time Jordan would be able to cling to it before it was all over.

 _Tell him,_ he willed, _tell him what he means to you. Tell him_ now.

But he couldn’t.

Adam stopped short. He drew a shaky breath.

“My kingdom for you,” he said. And then he got down on one knee.

* * *

 

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'd done!!!
> 
> This fic has been a true labor of love and I couldn't have done it without the support I got here! Also @booperesque who took my idea and turned it into a monster by demanding lambs, dogs and lichens.
> 
> If you liked it, please tell me, and if you didn't, I want to know that too!! I'd love to keep writing these two idiots and I'd love to hear what you have to say. 
> 
> You can find me on my [tumblr](http://lesbleusthroughandthrough.tumblr.com/) where I screech about hendollana and will be posting about fics I write in the new year!


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